Colm Parkinson has been spending a lot of time on Twitter these days railing against parody accounts of well-known GAA figures. It's a strange phenomenon, especially within the context of GAA, and one we're not completely comfortable with either. It's bizarre how Joe Punter can exist in the Twitter ghetto with something like 42 followers, tweeting their GAA musings to themselves, but give them a mock GAA personae like Brian Cody's Head and they can receive an incredible amount of followers. Fake Marty Morrissey was at the cutting edge of the fake GAA Twitter profile trend and with 26,000+ followers (four times more than the real Marty, has spawned countless other copycats - fake Cody, fake Loughnane (but incredibly no fake Parkinson). Parkinson, using his journalistic acumen, has gone to the trouble of tracking down info on the identity of fake Marty and has today outed him as "Paul Corey, 19/20 years old from Kildress, Cookstown, Tyrone".
Fake Marty account is run by Paul Corey, 19/20 years old from Kildress, Cookstown, Tyrone ..here's a pic of him hahaha twitter.com/Woolberto/stat…
— Colm Parkinson (@Woolberto) July 11, 2012
Interestingly, the real Corey has 340 Twitter followers. 'Fake Marty' has fought back, but he's been caught out and it will be interesting to see if the account holds up now that his Corey's name in the public domain. This is all a bit strange, but it's definitely a landmark in the relationship between GAA culture and Twitter
I was an average footballer,I have no All Irelands/All stars,I have a ginger beard,I am the most disliked person in the GAA Who am I??
— Marty Morrissey(@Marty_Morrissey) July 10, 2012
