Lil Nas X tweets from a second account after Twitter blocked him to prevent spread of cryptocurrency scam
After Twitter blocked several celebrity accounts from tweeting over a hack, Lil Nas X has created a second account to continue his need to catch up on social media.
Numerous high-profile verified Twitter accounts were hacked on July 15, seemingly to push a cryptocurrency scam that may have netted upwards of $100,000 in a matter of minutes. These kinds of scams aren't necessarily new on Twitter, but never have so many prominent accounts been taken over at once. The social media platform then took the unprecedented step of suspending all tweets from verified accounts for about a half-hour. They even blocked some password reset attempts. Other restrictions were also set in place but went largely unexplained through the evening.
Several victims of the bitcoin hack said they use multi-factor authentication to protect their accounts, but that security feature did not help. Nevertheless, there may be a problem with Twitter itself due to the amount of hacked accounts. According to MIT Technology Review, a company spokesperson said Twitter is “investigating and taking steps” to address the incident. It hasn't been confirmed yet how it happened or who is behind the attack.
The incident has real-world impact: the National Weather Service was unable to tweet updates to its followers as tornado warnings came into effect in Illinois.
While many have had their accounts blocked, singer Lil Nas X couldn't keep his fans from being updated and additionally used the moment to crack some jokes. The 'Old Town Road' hitmaker created a second account and passed on some hilarious memes to vent his frustrations.
In his first post he wrote, "THIS IS LIL NAS I CANT TWEET U GUYS PLEASE GIVE ME ATTENTION" along with a crying meme. In his second, he shared a popular 'SpongeBob SquarePants' meme with Squidward crushing the life out of Mr. Krabs' eyeballs. His caption read, "DONT SILENCE ME!"
The third showed a pic of sad Chuck E. Cheese-looking mouse standing on broken computer parts with his message "What’s the point of life if i can’t tweet." It seems Nas X may be a 'SpongeBob SquarePants' fan as another post he shared was a short clip of Squidward telling his pals he was just kidding.
Even if Nas X's secondary account gets a short lifespan, so far he has provided some real entertainment for his followers.