Fort Bragg, the massive US military base in North Carolina, has deleted its official Twitter account after claiming it had been hacked to explain a string of embarrassing sexually explicit messages.
The messages were “not the work of our admins,” the base said in a now-deleted tweet on Wednesday afternoon. “Our account was hacked. We apologize to our followers.” The entire account disappeared shortly thereafter.
It appears no one on Twitter seemed to buy the “we were hacked” excuse. Journalist Sophia Narwitz speculated that it’s far more likely the social media manager at Bragg forgot to log out of the base and into his (definitely his) personal account before simping for an e-girl.
The “I was hacked” defense didn’t work for C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, the ill-fated moderator of the canceled presidential debate. He was suspended last week, after admitting he falsely claimed to have been hacked in order to weasel out of tweeting at a critic of President Donald Trump.
The blunder and the overreaction to the embarrassment provided endless fodder for Twitter comedy, from GIFs to memes.
Fort Bragg’s embarrassment isn’t even the first instance this week of someone getting in trouble online over their sex drive. CNN commentator and New Yorker writer Jeffery Toobin was just suspended over indulging in some extra pleasure, so to speak, during a recent work Zoom call.
However, the 250-square-mile (650-square-kilometer) facility is on a somewhat different level, seeing as it serves as the headquarters of the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), Army Forces Command and Army Reserve Command, among others. It is also the home of one military intelligence and two psychological operations brigades.
As of Wednesday evening, the account @FtBraggNC now shows “Joined October 2020” as its status, a blank avatar and zero followers. It follows only one account, a podcast producer named “Dr. Strategy,” who highlighted their predicament earlier in the day.
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