Fans of The Beatles and Kanye West were fooled by Twitter jokesters who reacted to the rapper’s surprise collaboration with Paul McCartney by back-patting his so-called discovery of the British megastar.
The new track, “Only One,” was released on New Year’s Eve. And it wasn’t long after that several Twitter users began cracking wise about the rapper’s latest “protege”:
“I don’t know who Paul McCartney is, but Kanye is going to give this man a career w/ this new song!!” tweeted @OVOJosh.
And from @DesusNice: “Kanye has a great ear for talent. This Paul McCartney guy gonna be huge.”
But one user in the U.K. with the handle @CurvedDaily struck a nerve when he wrote: “Who tf is paul mccartney???!??! this is why i love kanye for shining light on unknown artists.”
Thousands retweeted, apparently unaware of @CurvedDaily’s joking tone. And many Beatles’ fans weren’t happy. The Independent reported that some of the comments that came with the retweets ranged from scornful to outright cruel and vicious.
But the user kept up the joke with a string of followup tweets:
“Come on guys, the whole thing was a joke and you’ve gone too far, i LOVE the beatles, paul mccarthy, ringo star, jay leno and the other one.”
And again: “Imagine I pissed off 2300 people, that’s more people than the whole population of the USA!!!!!”
And one more: “Guys please leave me alone, I love the Beatles ok! smells like teen spirit is one of my favorite songs!! stop telling me [I] don’t know music.”
The user, frustrated his fairly obvious trolling wasn’t detected, finally gave up, tweeting: “I have lost hope in the human race.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.