Now that the video of nine-year-old Quaden Bayles has gone viral, it appears that some on the internet are trying to capitalize on the situation. Bayles, who has achondroplasia dwarfism, was filmed by his mother, Yarakka, while he was crying after being incessantly bullied by his schoolmates. As the video received attention from all over the world, some fake accounts in Bayles’ name have begun to pop up.
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The Instagram page @quadenbayleslove posted a screenshot of a Twitter account, @Quadossss, outing it as a fake account. There’s also an Instagram account, @quadosss, which was recently made into a private account.
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“There are false accounts giving information about me,” the caption began. “Saying I’m 18 and I’m a scammer. That is a lie, people. Anyone who posts something like that, please report.”
However, in a real plot twist situation, the Instagram account itself also looks to be fake, given that the oldest post dates back to Thursday, and most of the captions and comments are written in Spanish. Interestingly, the allegedly fake Twitter account does link to the real GoFundMe that was created by comedian Brad Williams to send Bayles and his family to Instagram, which has taken in well over $400,000 as of Friday evening.
Fake accounts are just another layer of strangeness that the viral video has unleashed. Namely, a conspiracy theory that the nine-year-old boy was, in fact, a wealthy-18-year-old con artist, based on some very questionable internet sleuthing. This whole thing seems to have started after someone stumbled upon an acting profile of Bayles, and fueled by a handful of tweets making similar claims.
However, Bayles has been in the spotlight for a number of years, speaking out against bullying along with his mother. Snopes pointed out that in 2015 when he was only 4 years old he appeared on Studio 10 in Australia to discuss a different bullying incident entirely.
On the upside, along with the outpouring of support, Bayles is also headed to Singapore to score some free MMA lessons from ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong.
“Our instructors will be sure to bully-proof Quaden,” Sityodtong told TMZ. “Let us all take the opportunity to show little Quaden how much the world cares.”
