INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
the victim even exist
"Police! I have just resolved a crime via Twitter! You need to deal with it immediately," wrote a
Spanish social media user going by the name of Mr Brightside on Saturday afternoon
He then proceeded to unpick what appeared to be a murder case, in great detail over 100 tweets
With limited followers, he had not been expecting much reaction
He says he is still overwhelmed by what happened next
More than two million people have interacted with his gripping whodunnit so far
The story centres on Jorge A, whose apparent death in Barcelona was ruled a suicide, but who - according to the thread - was killed as a
result of an elaborate polyamorous plot
Mr Brightside claimed he could prove it largely based on one photo
Spanish police appeared to give it credence too, tweeting a reply
"Your research confirms the report of our investigators," they said, before adding an advisory: "If you are a victim of sextortion, the
Don't give in to blackmail."It was an extraordinary story.Except none of it was true
So, who did the whodunnitThe story was created for a competition organised by Twitter Spain, where users were asked to tell a story via a
series of tweets, threaded together
However, this entry was so compelling its reach spiralled out of control and it became an unintentional lesson in the power of fake news and
Many readers guessed it was fiction
They either found clues that all was not as it seemed, or recognised the hashtag added to the very last tweet - #FeriadelHilo (meaning
"thread festival", the competition's name).In fact, police had not been fooled either
Their response also gave a nod to the competition's hashtag - and, realistically, the police would never convict a murderer via Twitter
thread
"I did not ask them to collaborate in the story," he says of the police involvement
creative writing has gained many fans
"This should be a Netflix series!", "Your tweets are like Agatha Christie!" said some
But there were also critics who felt duped
"I believed the whole thing!" wrote one with a series of crying emojis
Who 'died'The fake case centred on a fictional Jorge, a 30-year-old from Bilbao who had recently moved to Barcelona
puzzled by his sudden death by suicide, so he decided to dig deeper
And there followed dozens of tweets, as he pieced the crime together using "evidence" that included a string of social media accounts,
Whatsapp messages, and even a newspaper article about Jorge's death
Jorge's friend, Luis, as a tribute after he died
It was said to have been taken in front of a mirror in a club in Barcelona, hours beforehand
Through more social media snooping, Mr Brightside finds out the man on the left is called Felipe
Mr Brightside then looks back at Jorge's past tweets and begins to get suspicious, so he starts combing the three men's tweets for clues
Along the way, he spots various oddities that imply that Jorge could have been superimposed into the picture as part of a cover-up
For example, Jorge's tattoo of the word "Freedom", which, if he were truly in front of a mirror, should have been reversed, but isn't
(He even has past tweets of Jorge unveiling his new tattoo as "proof" of how it looked originally.)There are other clues, such as the watch
on Felipe's arm that reads 05:55, even though news reports he quotes say Jorge's body was found at 05.30
There follow dozens more tweets, with more details and more suspicions as Mr Brightside tracks down the other men in the background - all
invented characters with invented social media accounts
These background characters finally lead him to another suspect: a Briton in Barcelona called Will
profile of the "victim" Jorge was linked to other faked accounts, which provided clues
Oddly, at this point, one of my own
year-old tweets is used as "evidence" of the suspect's sexual preferences
I once tweeted a TheIndianSubcontinent story about three-people couples and "Will the Brit" finds it and likes it
The internet sleuth then deduces that Luis, Felipe and Will were in a three-way relationship
And Jorge had been caught in the middle, which ultimately leads to his death at Will's house and the need to pretend he was elsewhere
The final moment of suspense comes when he confronts Will with an accusation
"You have the wrong person, I don't know what you are talking about," the suspect replies, forcing Mr Brightside to explain that he knows
about the manipulated photo
Mr Brightside captures their exchanged Twitter messages - and the tell-tale animated ellipsis marks, which show that Will is carefully
Then, finally, Will responds: "What do you want", which Mr Brightside takes as his confession
None of the people in the images were real
He created their faces via a mix of his face with his friends
Many of the crucial details - including the watch and the tattoo - were added via Photoshop
picture of a friend
He created the social media profiles using stock images and populated the accounts with unrelated tweets
to make them look active and genuine - a technique used by those who create legions of trolls for political purposes.However, he also made a
mistake in creating them all on the same day - which some eagle-eyed readers noticed as a giveaway.Mr Modesto told the TheIndianSubcontinent
that he is utterly shocked by the story's popularity
"People have written to me from Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru"They have even created memes, replacing the figures in
the picture with their own suggested suspects.Mr Modesto said he has also been contacted by people who still believed it was true; they were
sending condolences about Jorge's death and insults towards the murderer.He says he did not plan it as a fake news experiment
However, it comes hot on the heels of another faked murder - that of a genuine Russian journalist, Arkady Babchenko, whose death was staged
by Ukrainian authorities at the end of May
"I only expected 200 people to like it, at most," said Mr Modesto of his thread
After the huge interest, he has reflected on the impact his story has had
"The moral is: don't believe everything you read on the internet."Twitter Spain will announce the winner of the thread competition on
