Fraudsters take heed: Reddit doesn’t like being tricked. And, they will use their collective investigative Internet powers to expose you.
When redditor chuncher posted a heartbreaking account of personal homelessness yesterday, the post shot to the front page.
Several Redditors quickly noticed something wasn’t right.
Reekar321 unearthed a comment on a Yahoo news article that was almost word for word the same as chuncher’s.
“Yep I wrote it there first,” chuncher wrote in reply after Reekar321 called him out. “Felt it would do well on Reddit after being upvoted there. Good find.”
But then redditor Phynd took an even closer look. The poster on Yahoo claimed to be a girl. Chuncher, in his post on Reddit, portrayed himself as a man. As one redditor pointed out, he’d already been debunked once before.
Busted.
Phynd put together the assembled evidence, made it into an image, and posted it. “Homelessness: Touching story, why steal credit and fake answers?” he titled the post.
As for chuncher, his post was downvoted into oblivion. Sometime thereafter, he deleted his account — and the original post.
The lesson? Don’t tempt Reddit’s sleuths, because they will find the truth.
