Bin Laden watched “The IT Crowd”? The staggering ability of Twitter to control the minds and imagination of the UK public has never been more evident – as creator of the hit TV programme has proven.
Graham Lineham, writer for popular shows including “Father Ted”, planned the hoax when inspiration came from reading a 16 year-old tweetard’s mini-blog which claimed “it appears that one good way of starting a rumour is to pretend that the story is already circulating”.
CNN at the time released videos from inside Osama’s hideout which showed the Al Qaeda boss watching television and taking advantage of his 100,000+ Twitter followers, the telly trickster tweeted the following to his faithful:
“Does anyone have confirmation that Osama was watching The IT Crowd in these home movies? Amazing if true. Don’t know how to feel”
Lineham went on in further tweets to suggest legit news outlets had reported that recently slain terror-leader could be seen mouthing dialogue from the Channel 4 show. Twit-addicts lapped this up and the writer now confesses it was easy to lead the flock by simply adding quotation marks to his tweets, giving the impression that his reports had been taken from realistic sources.
“The IT Crowd” penman gave up the game after, amazingly, reputable news sites started picking up the story and reporting it as real. A total reversal of Lineham’s follow-the-leader antics!
The Power of Twitter, people – Don’t believe everything they tweet!
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