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It's happened so many times that unfortunately it is a non-story that they think they were "exposing". No reasonable person with experience on reddit or any other social media site would take these throwaway posts seriously.

/u/LucidEnding was the worst.... a Gawker writer who pretended he was going to be euthanized in the next few hours. But had basic facts wrong about how it worked in Oregon (even though the writer's undergrad thesis was about that specifically). So many people fell for it and I got downvoted to hell for posting about how fake the post was.

People can not even trust non-throwaway posts. Anyone remember elderly reddit celebrity mayonnaise king /u/grandpawiggly who faked his existence and experience for years? I am sure there are dozens of those "creative writing" experiments going on at any one time on reddit.

The real problem is that I suspect many "journalists" who report on these accounts know that it is suspect or fake but simply do not care. They just want the clicks from the inexperienced who are not web savvy.