Editor’s note and 11:30pm EST update: After we published this piece at around 6:30pm EST on Sunday, The Yappie was shown detailed evidence by two Twitter users demonstrating that the account @Geosmaniac was fake. We originally withheld the name provided by the account because we were led to believe that this incident involved a minor. Now that it appears this is not the case, we have updated the piece to include it.
“Hi, I just quit my job at @PapaJohns in Greenville,” a tweet by the account @Geosmaniac said on Saturday evening. “My manager was a creepy, racist ass. He continuously flirted with me even though I’m 16. Since rejecting him, he’s been leaving me racist notes and threatened to lie and say my family sells illegal dog meat.”
The tweet — which included a letter filled with threats and anti-Asian slurs allegedly sent by a manager in Greenville, Texas — immediately went viral. At its peak, it racked up more than 2,000 retweets or mentions from prominent Asian American activists and media personalities, including the blog Angry Asian Man. On the subreddits r/aznidentity and r/asianamerican, furious commentators urged @Geosmaniac to take legal action. And online and in statements to the press, the nation’s third-largest pizza delivery company pledged to investigate the situation.
But by Sunday morning, the tweet and the account were gone. Twitter sleuths who spoke to The Yappie said it was all a hoax.
When contacted via Twitter Saturday evening for the original story, @Geosmaniac told The Yappie that she was a 16-year-old Papa John’s employee named Georgiana Kao who had began working at a Greenville, Texas location on December 3, 2018. During an hour-long conversation, “Georgiana” attempted to detail several false claims against an unnamed manager, including claims of unwanted verbal and physical advances.
“When I was nearly done with my shift, he would always pull me to the back and ask if I wanted a ‘quick ride’ home,” “Georgiana” alleged. “He’d ask me to go on dates nonstop and every time I rejected, he would get angry and rant about how he could fire me whenever [he] wanted.”
“Georgiana” also claimed that the manager began slipping her blatantly racist drawings and photos of dead dogs with the word “Konnichiwa” typed or written above them. After the manager discovered that she had told a coworker about his behavior, “Georgiana” said that he mailed her roses and a typed message threatening to “make a public announcement that my Asian employee’s, which would be you, parents are kidnapping local dogs and sending the meat back to China and Korea.”
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’ll lose my job over a chink immigrant who isn’t even supposed to be in my space,” a photo of letter provided to The Yappie concluded.
“Georgiana” said that she resigned two days after receiving the letter and reached out to Papa John’s to discuss the situation — even providing what she said were private messages to Papa John’s support account.
But @Geosmaniac fell silent and was taken down following a request by The Yappie for a phone interview, and after Twitter and Reddit users began to raise doubts about the account. Repeated attempts to verify the owner’s identity were unsuccessful, and Papa John’s appeared confused by suggestions that “Georgiana” had contacted them.
“Papa John’s takes allegations of employee misconduct very seriously,” a Papa John’s spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday. “We have reached out several times to this person to find out the exact store location so we can properly investigate this matter and take appropriate action. We have not received a response.”
The evolution of a fake profile
For @snarkysnowqueen and William Li (@Bowdenx3), the account appeared suspicious from the beginning. Among the inconsistencies, @Geosmaniac had stated multiple times in 2018 that she was 17 years old — directly contradicting her viral tweet.
But the most compelling evidence indicating that the account was a hoax was one of the images that it posted Sunday morning. While “Georgiana” claimed that it was one of the drawings sent by the Greenville manager after December 2018, @snarkysnowqueen and @Bowdenx3 provided The Yappie with an identical image from another account dated nearly two months earlier.
A review of the account’s prior activity by the two Twitter users also found an abrupt change in the owner’s identity, painting a profile of a user intent on exploiting cultural and racial tensions for retweets. In late-2018, @Geosmaniac evolved from what appeared to be a white male teenager from Scotland to an Asian American female suspended from school over a hickey on her neck (a single tweet from the account received more than 43,000 retweets and 237,000 likes last year). Screenshots from November 2018 show that @Geosmaniac lifted an Instagram photo from the Swedish YouTuber Julia Dang for its profile avatar to complete the transformation.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the account’s origins.
“I’ll always stand by victims and my motto is ‘believe victims,’” @snarkysnowqueen told The Yappie. “But this had too many holes and I’ve been online for a long time. Fake stories dilute the impact of actual cases of racism and sexual harassment, and someone co-opting the identity of a victimized Asian teenager in a ham-fisted bid for attention needed to be called out.”
“It’s just a bad situation overall,” Li (@Bowdenx3) said. “When a story like this goes viral, you absolutely need to give the victim the benefit of the doubt while still fact checking, and everything takes place very quickly.”
“This story by no means does anything to discredit anyone else’s experience of being discriminated against,” he continued. “They should never take a story like this, or the acts of someone like the identity thief, as reason not to [come forward].”
“Of course, I would add that with incidents of discrimination like this, it is usually better to come forward first, to a family member, trusted friend, attorney, or the police… More often than not, the right advice will be to go to the authorities or consult a lawyer.”
An easy target
The false allegations of racism and harassment at Papa John’s locations came after a rocky year for the pizza company. The chain’s founder John “Papa John” Schnatter resigned as chairman in July 2018 after reports emerged that he had used the n-word on a conference call. He continues to retain a seat on the company’s board.
Several incidents involving Papa John’s employees have also angered the Asian American community in the past, making the company especially vulnerable to criticism.
In 2012, an employee was terminated after describing a customer as “lady chinky eyes” on a receipt, leading the New York location to hold sensitivity trainings. A Papa John’s in Louisville, Kentucky, also terminated an employee in 2016 who named a customer’s pizza order “ching-ching.”
Papa John’s has said that the actions of these employees are inexcusable and do not reflect their company’s values. The company’s official Twitter account called the latest incident “completely unacceptable,” and reiterated that they “do not take this lightly.”
Papa John’s did not respond to requests for further comment.
With additional editing from Sydney Thai and Iris Zhao. Subscribers get early access to exclusive stories like this one. Subscribe for free now.
