Almost three years into the pandemic, the fog is finally lifting — and it’s clear things were not what they seemed.
Social media played a pivotal role in stoking fears and widening divisions, but at least four accounts claiming to be doctors pushing masks, lockdowns, and other COVID-19 mitigation measures were complete fakes.
Last month, the San Francisco Standard recounted how writer Joshua Gutterman Tranen stumbled upon the knowledge, first with the discovery that Dr. Robert Honeyman, who used “they/them” pronouns and claimed multiple COVID-19-related tragedies, never actually existed.
Gutterman Tranen became suspicious after performing a Google search and finding that Honeyman not only used a stock photo as a profile picture, but also didn’t appear to exist in any academic writings or work at any institution.
“There’s this account — Dr. Robert Honeyman — who says their sister died of covid in Nov and now their husband is in a coma with covid,” Gutterman Tranen tweeted on Dec. 13.
“I cannot find any record of them anywhere, from any academic institution. On the left is a stock photo and on the right is their profile photo.”
There’s this account — Dr. Robert Honeyman — who says their sister died of covid in Nov and now their husband is in a coma with covid. I cannot find any record of them anywhere, from any academic institution. On the left is a stock photo and on the right is their profile photo. pic.twitter.com/DFwxVqv9HL
— joshua gutterman tranen (@jdgtranen) December 13, 2022
Also, Honeyman’s viewpoints seemed manufactured, something Gutterman Tranen referred to as “liberal Mad Libs” about it.
Do you think there are more of these fake accounts out there?
Yes: 100% (55 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
“I’m a self-identified leftist, and I understand that people have a lot of different identities, but it felt concocted in the lab about how many identities and horrible experiences can we put on one person,” Gutterman Tranen said.
Honeyman was transgender, rabidly COVID-19 cautious, and a “Doctor of Sociology and Feminist studies” who championed diversity and sported the transgender and Ukrainian flag emojis on his Twitter handle.
He later got on board with the monkeypox scare, claiming in a July tweet that he was suffering from the virus.
“Don’t believe what the media have been sharing. […] it’s a horrible disease that has had me bed ridden,” he wrote.
In October, he said he was a victim of an attack because of his transgender identity.
Meanwhile, his equally-fake husband, Dr. Patrick Honeyman, was purportedly comatose because of COVID-19. That Twitter profile sported the rainbow flag in his bio next to a photo lifted from a Wayne, Indiana, insurance professional.
However, it wasn’t just this pair of doctors who turned out to be fabrications.
Others who interacted with the Honeyman’s were also false accounts, such as Dr. Gerold Fischer, who upped the ante with the transgender, Ukrainian, and rainbow flag emojis in addition to his self-description as “an ally for all in the #LGBQT+ Community. #WearAMask.”
Internet archives show Fischer tweeted the hashtag “PrayforHoneyman” in support of the sick Honeyman as well as a string of several tweets and retweets of left-leaning COVID-19 opinions, all from the account using a stylized avatar.
Added to the mix was a fourth account, supposedly University of Antwerp’s own Dr. Steve “Ste” Ville, who labeled himself as an “LGBTQ+ Ally” and “Proud Mask Wearer” — but none of that was real either.
These accounts would interact with each other, and retweet messages supporting the most radical pandemic policies.
Even so, Robert Honeyman got a little carried away with a tweet on Nov. 27. “Come on china! Stop protesting, I wish we had similar lockdown measures here,” the fake doctor wrote.
With the exception of Fischer, whose account was created in 2019, the faux physicians all turned up during the pandemic, leading to questions about the reason they may have existed in the first place.
Perhaps an updated report from the San Francisco Standard provided the answer when it turned out that the person behind the account claimed to be from a troll farm in southern Africa.
The employees are given “potential COVID positive accounts” complete with passwords and usernames.
“The accounts have been paid to promote COVID from a COVID influencer and small American YouTuber/website host,” the person, claiming to be writing from a small house where they get paid to create these posts, told the news outlet.
“Since payment has stopped I will be deactivating the account,” the person added.
“Many people in my community get paid to do this for many other agendas.”
None of the accounts in question appear to be active at this time, though Dr. Robert Honeyman was reportedly back online earlier this month for a while.
It’s no surprise there are fake accounts on Twitter.
After all, when Tesla mogul Elon Musk was brokering the deal to purchase the social media platform, he worried that a high percentage of users were bots.
However, the flavor of these particular accounts and the fact that they seem to be run by flesh and blood people leaves many questions about who or what might be behind this effort.
It’s one thing to have a bot or artificial intelligence program that posts or retweets, but going through the trouble of hiring actual people seems a bit more careful and professional.
Perhaps the people behind these accounts just wanted to stoke divisions and spur social media engagement for the sake of online revenue.
There is still much to learn about this phenomenon — but like so many other things that were obscured by the fog that set in during the pandemic, it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out.
