The Real O’Neal Puts His Cyber Foot Down
New York Times, November 21, 2008
Shaquille O’Neal had a problem. An Internet impostor using his name was sending messages to unsuspecting Shaq fans. So O’Neal did what any sensible, 7-foot-1, muscle-bound mammoth would do. He started tweeting.
Shaquille O’Neal has moved into the Internet territory of his impersonator, ShaquilleONeal.
“This is the real SHAQUILLE O’NEAL,” came the message from The_Real_Shaq, via Twitter.com, early Tuesday morning.
A clarification was in order because, for the last several months, someone registered as ShaquilleONeal was sending frequent messages, or tweets, to hundreds of subscribers.
The synthetic Shaq sounded a lot like the real O’Neal. His blurbs were whimsical, boastful and creative, even adopting O’Neal’s unique grammatical flourishes.
“My tweets are Shaqalicious,” ShaquilleONeal wrote Nov. 11.
“Andrew Bynum’s knee is like Erika Dampier ... fragile,” ShaquilleONeal wrote Sept. 30, dealing a two-fisted insult to the Lakers’ Andrew Bynum and the Mavericks’ Erick Dampier.
The real Shaq — who could fill an almanac with clever quips — could hardly have said it better. Now he is. O’Neal opened his own Twitter account this week to connect with fans and to take back his identity.
