Hockeyy Insiderr, An Anonymous NHL Source, Is Nothing But a Fraud
By Eric He
Sources…what are they? Who can we trust to bring us the “inside information” that we crave? How do we know for sure who a “source” is?
In January of last year, Kings of Kauffman did an experiment when they fabricated a story about a trade going down and told it to a so-called “insider” on Twitter. Well what do you know, the “insider” reported that trade as fact, within a matter of hours. A complete fraud? You bet.
So, I decided to have some fun of my own and see if I could coax an “insider” to report some fake news.
Courtesy: Wiki Commons
I had the perfect person in mind: “Hockeyy Insiderr,” a supposed ex-NHLer who has maintained many contacts around the league and has accumulated over 34,000 followers on Twitter. He breaks trades, remains anonymous, and has a website called insiderumors.com.
This anonymous “insider” has made a name for himself by “breaking” rumors, signings, and trades before the mainstream media. Sometimes he is correct, and sometimes he is blatantly wrong, but the fact that he is able to reach a large amount of people with his reports is what draws attention to him.
Thus, I knew I had the right candidate to mess with.
My plan was simple: following the strategy used by Kings of Kauffman, I sought to contact him with a trade rumor and see if he would take the bait.