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The Next Time Shane Morris Goes Viral, Don't Fall for It

By Mike Redmond | Social Media | May 29, 2019 |

By Mike Redmond | Social Media | May 29, 2019 |


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In a long forgotten era spoken only in hushed whispers as “last week,” Shane Morris managed to capture the internet’s criminally fickle attention with a now-deleted Twitter thread about how he cleverly pulled off an amusing drug heist right under MS-13’s nose. At first glance, it should’ve been readily apparent that Morris Gary Stu-d himself into Walter White (if Walter White let the Neo-Nazis style his hair) which he fully admits in a follow-up Medium post where he comes clean about the obvious fact that he made the whole thing up. Granted, that confession is ensconced inside an even more bullsh*t story about how Morris has to go into hiding because MS-13 wants to kill him, but I want you to pay careful attention to what he’s saying in this opening remark:

Think about the story you just read for a moment: If I had actually sold a fake brick of heroin, that I claimed I stole from an MS-13 gang member, and they really had my name and cell phone number… I wouldn’t be alive right now.

Just so we’re all clear, that’s Shane Morris calling everyone who fell for his story a f*cking idiot. And he’s not wrong. He’s literally spelling it out that he’s a liar while leading you down another gullible alley where he expects you to believe he needs money to hide from a drug gang while simultaneously blasting his name, face, and plans to elude said gang all over the internet. At that point, no one should be taking a single word Morris says seriously, and yet, The Daily Beast took him at his word when they contacted him for a quote. Which would be the second time the Beast has been duped by Morris going viral because welcome to his whole entire bag.

You see, back in April, Morris had another bout with viral success after he wrote an attention-grabbing Twitter thread about Lil Nas X. For the sake of brevity, Morris claimed to be a “former country music label person” who was ready to spill some tea on how the “terrestrial country music market is filled to a surfeit with racism and bigotry.” You’ll probably be shocked to learn that not only was every detail that Morris provided easily debunked by Saving Country Music, but the slightest bit of journalistic diligence revealed that Morris did some limited contractor work for Sony Music Nashville that wouldn’t have put him near any kind of insider information. So you’ll never guess how he was portrayed in the rest of the media.

Via Saving Country Music:

Whether due to a media echo chamber, or purposeful embellishment to give a more forceful effect to Shane Morris’s claims, the media made Morris into a senior, executive-level member of the country music industry, when this wasn’t even what Shane Morris was claiming.

The Shane Morris Twitter thread, and many of its unproven, and outright incorrect facts were published by a dozen or more different outlets. Vulture quoted Shane Morris in their article on the subject, Huffpost cited the Shane Morris in their story, and so did The Daily Beast, none of whom did any background vetting on Shane Morris, nor put out any effort to verify his claims or former employment status in Nashville. Along with all of the quotations and links the Shane Morris Twitter thread received, NPR interviewed Shane Morris directly on April 5th for their nationally-syndicated program, “Morning Edition,” predicated off the idea that he was a country music insider with intimate knowledge on the subject.

Whoops. Turns out just a tiny bit of Googling would’ve revealed that Shane Morris is the exact last person anyone should be quoting about anything. Sadly, only a country music fansite did the requisite legwork, and their results were, uh, goddamn.

Though most had never heard of Morris before the Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road” controversy, Shane Morris is very well known among multiple fan bases for being one of the most aggressive and vile trolls on Twitter in all of music. He’s been accused of making death threats towards young girls, has been caught attacking and threatening to kill or harm the children of performers, along with making homophobic jokes, and jokes about AIDS, genocide, Nazis, 9/11, and the Holocaust, many of which have been verified and documented online. After Saving Country Music posted the initial rebuttal to Shane Morris’s Twitter thread on March 31st, numerous individuals reached out to say they had either been personally threatened by Shane Morris in the past, or knew individuals who had received threats from him, including people on message boards, Tumblr, Facebook groups based in Nashville, and especially on Twitter.

In a Nashville Scene article posted on October 9th, 2018 about Shane Morris’s offer to help potential progressive candidates with web design solutions, an update was added to the story that read, “Update: Morris allegedly has a history of using abusive and discriminatory language online. Read more here. When asked about the allegations, Morris responded with an image of a fabricated Pith tweet disparaging minorities.”

By this point, someone in the peanut gallery is going to inevitably start thinking that writing about Morris is giving him exactly what he wants. Not so much. Sure, Morris is getting attention right now, but it’s the kind of attention that puts a significant shelf-life on his ability to pull these kind of stunts. While his heroin story is theoretically a viral success, it was also an escalation that made all of Morris’s horsesh*t shenanigans float to the surface. In essence, he trolled too close to the sun. So the next time he reaches for that viral gold — and believe me, they’ll be a next time — he’s now a prominent search term with some less than ideal results. Of course, that requires the media to learn from its mistakes, so clearly the real f*cking idiot here is me.

On a related note, there’s still a very chance that Morris’ little yarn could land him a development deal from some bro-douche agent, but what are the odds of that? It’s not like Hollywood has a long, documented history of championing sh*t-ass men. That’s crazy talk.

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