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.”

A screenshot of the viral tweet before it was deleted on Sunday.

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.

Viral (and false) claims

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.”