Thumbman is a fake!

This image on the right of a man looking like a thumb was sent to Steven Fry this morning by i_charlie, Stephen Fry then RT (retweeted) the image and being Stephen Fry, the unofficial emperor of twitter, it has quickly done the rounds across the web (twitter, facebook and our office). I even posted it on my own blog…

Useless internet crap being shared is nothing new but what I think is interesting about this internet meme is the twitter user thumbman. The user was only created today and his second ever twitter post was “@StephenFry linked to my picture!! Does that mean I’m going to be famous? Maybe the world isn’t ready for me”.

As the twitter account was only created after the image began spreading across the internet. My thinking is that someone saw it posted on Stephen Fry and saw a opportunity so created a fake twitter account.

Since creation, twitter thumbman has been busy adding up anyone mentioning or retweeting the thumbman image, and encouraging users to photoshop his thumbhead as they see fit.

It looks as though fake twitter thumbman is trying to grab as much online attention as possible. Within a hour of posting my blog post, the twitter thumbman has commented on it with a link back to his twitter. This makes me think fake thumbman has been montoring twitter & google blog search for mentions. Predicting that thumbman is going to be notorious, fakethumbman is trying to captalize on it by already offering merchandise (under the guise of charity but really only 10% is going to charity).

I think who ever thumbman is, he’s spotted a potential earner and trying to game it for his own return, which I can’t blame him for, but what I really want to know is who is the real thumbman?! (apologises for my photoshop skills)

Update: Fake thumbman now has a website, check out the funny pictures