Legendary country singer Billy Ray Cyrus has become the unintentional laughingstock of the Internet Friday morning, after being duped into retweeting a photo of the infamous British pedophile Jimmy Savile.
Jake imo, aka @ekajronnoco, sent a tweet to the father of pop star Miley on Thursday night, asking for a retweet because “it’s my Granddads birthday today and he’s a huge fan.” Unfortunately for Billy, the photo most certainly was not Jake’s grandfather.
Instead, it was a photo of the late Jimmy Savile, a British TV presenter and media personality who was revealed after his death in 2011 to have been a serial child abuser, who took advantage of his fame to exploit hundreds of children throughout his career.
The photo has since been retweeted almost 500 times.
Jake was almost certainly inspired by another Internet prankster, Philip Bradbury, who recently fooled real estate mogul Donald Trump into retweeting a photo of the Fred and Rosemary West, British serial killers known for torturing, raping, and murdering numerous young girls.
Somewhat unbelievably, Jake imo continues to maintain his innocence, professing ignorance of the true identity of the subject of his photo.
“@NapoPeb: @ekajronnoco @billyraycyrus lol ! You realise said ‘grandad’ was a serial paedophile? Idiot.” I had no clue lad 😧
— Jake imo (@ekajronnoco) October 3, 2014
A trend has now begun; it’s likely that in the coming weeks, many more U.S. celebrities, ignorant of U.K. criminal history, will find themselves the butt of a thousand jokes on Twitter.
For now we can only sit, wait, and wonder: Who’s going to be “Trumped” next?
Photo via Jake imo/Twitter
