Everything You Need to Know About the Internet Mess That Has Left Me For Dead
What the fuck is going on here?????
OK, just stay with me here, because this goes places. So, so many places.
It started simply enough, with Dean Browning, a former commissioner for Pennsylvania's Lehigh County and a notably white human, tweeting, "I’m a black gay guy and I can personally say that Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse. Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected - which I never do when democrats are involved." (Browning was responding to a tweet stating, "What Trump built in 4 years, Biden will destroy in 4 months.")
According to his website, Browning, who ran for Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district this year and lost in the Republican primary, has been married to his wife for 32 years, so we can assume that aside from not being Black, he is also not gay (I will NOT be entertaining any bad "haha closeted Republican" jokes for this blog).
Never is there not something going on with old, white guys, especially Republicans, so this seemed like just a regular story about an old Republican white guy pretending to be a Black man on Twitter.
First twist: Browning then claimed that, uhh, he was merely quoting a message that he received from a follower himself, and then went on to cite Black and LGBTQ electoral support for Trump. Everyone went, sure, OK buddy!!!!!!
BUT IT DOESN'T STOP THERE, DEAR READERS! THEN, people claimed to have found the alternate account Browning was trying to use when he sent that first tweet!
The account was made in October, and semi-frequently responds to Browning's tweets and fights battles in Browning's replies. I counted more than 70 tweets of the account's that involved Browning in the replies, and that's out of 376 tweets from the account total. SUSPICIOUS!!!!
Just imagining these tweets are from Browning, they get way, way worse.........
BUT IT'S STILL NOT OVER!!!! SECOND TWIST!
THEN, a Black man claiming to be Dan Purdy posted a video on the account confirming he's the one who sent the message to Browning, who still somehow (?????) posted it to his Twitter account.
OH MY GOD I KNOW BUT IT IS STILL NOT OVER. THIRD, AND WILDEST, TWIST!!!!
PEOPLE THEN APPEARED TO FIGURE OUT THAT THE PERSON IN THE DAN PURDY VIDEO IS NOT ACTUALLY NAMED DAN PURDY, BUT IS A PERSON NAMED BYL HOLTE, OR WILLIAM HOLTE, WHO IS THE SON OF THE LATE JACQUELINE HOLTE, WHO WAS A SISTER OF THE GREAT PATTI LABELLE?????????
AND NOW DAN/BYL'S TWITTER ACCOUNT HAS BEEN SUSPENDED. TRULY, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE??????
And now I'm dead. Before I died, I asked Dan Purdy—or Byl Holte, or whoever this person is—for comment. We'll see.