Explained: McDonald's Twitter account gone rogue

Over the last week, the account appeared to go rogue with a series of increasingly unhinged messages. Photo / Getty

By Valerie Siebert

A fake McDonald's Twitter account, which went unnoticed by the fast-food giant for nearly a year, went viral over the weekend when it tweeted a number of disturbing messages.

The account, claiming to represent "McDonald's Hong Kong", first appeared on the scene in October 2016, and at the beginning was only posting promotional tweets.

But over the last week, the account appeared to go truly rogue with a series of increasingly unhinged messages, suggesting that the person running it was going through some serious personal problems.

"Where is my son they took my son," the account tweeted on July 29, also adding: "I want to quit she left me."

What made the tweets even more jarring is that they continued to be interspersed between additional promotional materials.

"I miss her so f***ing much. F*** this job. Where is my wife and where is my son..." reads another tweet, posted just after another promoting McDonald's mobile-friendly website.

Other users eventually noticed the alarming messages and began sharing them with their followers.

McDonald's Hong Kong please be okay

— 🔥🌶capsaicin cutie🌶🔥 (@knifwif) July 28, 2017

"Everything ok?" asked one user, sharing a number of the tweets, with another adding:

"What even the hell is happening over at @Mc_DonaldsHK?"

Who hurt you, @McDonalds? Was it @BurgerKing?

— justin (@MurphyFerguson) July 29, 2017

Then on Sunday the Twitter account was shut down after it was "reported for impersonation" by the burger chain and has since changed its handle to @notMcDonaldsHK, to flag itself as a parody account in line with Twitter policy.

BuzzFeed reached out to the makers of the account, who turned out to be UK teenagers, and spoke to one of them, an 18-year-old from London called Zain.

Zain revealed that he had forgotten about the account until recently, when he logged in and saw that it was being taken seriously by users as an official McDonald's account.

"At this point, we realised that with this mistake they had put us in more power than they wanted to," he said.

After posting the disturbing tweets, the group of teenagers found that users were direct-messaging the account to ask if the person behind the tweets was okay.

Viral marketing there from McDonalds Hong Kong, every fourth tweet from a worker trapped inside! Hoping it's a gimmick...

— Jerry Maine (@JerryLMaine) July 29, 2017

McDonald's confirmed to Gizmodo that the account was indeed a fake and that the company was looking to shut it down. Despite the name change, it remains suspended.

Sadly, despite the furor it caused, Zain said that he won't be continuing on with the parody account, saying "The peak of its time is done" and he believes it will soon become "unfunny."