People Are Losing Their Minds Over A Fake Image “Revealing” Postal Survey Fraud

Because apparently no one bothers to fact-check or even use their brain when reading stuff on Twitter, hundreds of people, including a federal MP, are now losing their minds over a totally fake tweet about the marriage equality postal survey.

Less than 24 hours ago, Twitter user and self-proclaimed internet idiot Dan Nolan posted an image of a torch illuminating the contents of a postal survey ballot inside an envelope. The accompanying tweet read “I work at the australia post in chatswood and I’m using a torch to check all ballots and throw out ALL no votes”.

I work at the australia post in chatswood and I'm using a torch to check all ballots and throw out ALL no votes pic.twitter.com/B0SNPXS5Yg

— dan (@dannolan) September 13, 2017

There were several signs that this tweet was an extremely dumb joke. One is that Nolan routinely tweets jokes. Another is that it’s a blatant callback to a very similar tweet made a year ago during the US Presidential election, which also spurred the fake news outrage machine.

Then there’s the fact that Australia Post tweeted to clarify that Dan Nolan does not work for them. And finally, there’s the fact that someone who was actually covertly committing serious fraud in their workplace probably wouldn’t tweet the evidence.

I'm crying pic.twitter.com/Sa2Z9oC0eH

— Lane Sainty (@lanesainty) September 13, 2017

And yet, despite all this, the internet has gone absolutely bonkers and the situation has escalated to death threats. A No campaign Facebook page briefly stoked outrage by sharing the tweet (it has since updated the post after realising it was fake), and this morning Federal MP George Christensen, who still hasn’t got the fake news memo, also weighed in.

I suspect you may get a visit from the Aust Federal Police. We know the yes side will stoop to any low tactic to win but this is illegal! https://t.co/cWbyb2NrMv

— George Christensen (@GChristensenMP) September 13, 2017

Meanwhile, Nolan has been inundated with death threats and abuse from other people who took the tweet seriously. When Junkee spoke to him this morning, he said he’s been receiving incredibly abusive Facebook messenger requests including “60+ messenger requests that are all like ‘I hope you get raped in prison'”.

He said the initial tweet was a “total joke I thought nobody would be stupid enough to believe”, and that the whole response has been a “storm in a teacup”.

Obviously Dan you have no moral compass of what is right or wrong, you don't respect democracy and foolishly think you have superior morals.

— Derick John (@derick1604) September 13, 2017

As far as the death threats go, Dan said “I’d rather cop this shit than a young gay kid on the internet because I just see it for what it is — untrammelled vitriol and ignorance from credulous morons most of whom come from Queensland.” He does feel bad for Australia Post’s social media team, though, and “would love to somehow send them flowers or a case of beer”.

There are a few things to learn from this whole debacle. One is a helpful reminder that tampering with mail is a federal offence — you should not be doing the things described in Dan’s tweet. Another takeaway is to use your brain on Twitter — both when tweeting, and when reading tweets. This should not be a sentence anyone has to write in 2017, but here we are.

And then there’s the more sobering lesson, which is that once again, we’re seeing evidence that this marriage debate is not at all respectful, and is capable of escalating very quickly to threats of violence and truly awful stuff. Regardless of whether you think Dan Nolan is an idiot, no one deserves this kind of response.