Can I get a slow clap for Rosie Okumura? Rosie is my new spirit animal.
Rosie, one half of the LA-based synth pop duo MODERNS, got catfished this week and she handled the online troll in the most epic way.
For the uninitiated, ‘Catfishing’ according to Wikipedia is ” a type of deceptive activity involving a person creating a sock puppet social networking presence for nefarious purposes”. Catfishing is becoming more and more prevalent and is commonly used for the purposes of creating a romantic relationship with someone you have never met who then turns out not to be who you thought. Which, I personally find a bit weird – call me old-fashioned that way.
In this case, 'Owen Wilson - a famous American actor' reached out to Okumura on Friday asking her to keep $60 million for him to hide from his wife. Her compensation would be $3 million. Lucky her! Sounds pretty legit to me.
All Rosie needed to do was send $3900 via Walmart money transfer to some mysterious woman in Kentucky who was apparently 'FBI personnel' investigating Owen Wilson's supposed soon to be ex-wife's emails. Again, this seems pretty above board.
Unfortunately for 'Owen', Rosie took it upon herself to have some fun at his expense and the results are a masterclass in trolling the trolls.
Rosie detailed her hilarious exchange with 'Owen' in a private Facebook group for women over the weekend. Thousands of women sat glued to their phones as the plot developed, with many even offering to 'donate' $3.90 to send to the shady woman in Kentucky to see what happened.
Rosie relied on girl-power to help her with a plot twist – she claimed to have donated $100k to Hurricane relief in Owen Wilson's name and needed her face photoshopped into a pic of someone donating a giant check to Donald Trump.
You can read the priceless conversation between Rosie and 'Owen' right here:
Read the whole catfishing exchange
Funnily enough, Rosie has actually met the real Owen Wilson several times in real life. The best part? The Karaoke story is true. Rosie was bartending at Nobu (a well-known celebrity hotspot) a few years back and he invited her along to Karaoke, but she didn't go.
However, Rosie's epic prank was made possible by some painful experiences.
"I was catfished at 17 by an online boyfriend who turned out to be a girl".
Rosie told me she's been the victim of catfishing many times before, with other people even using her own images to create fake profiles. Someone also catfished an entire ring of her friends. Another one began a music career using all of her friend's photos and had hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter under the name Josh Diago.
I mean, don't people have anything better to do?
It also strikes me as funny that these scammers, whilst finding new and creative ways over the years to try and lure people in, still don't bother to do a basic English spelling and grammar check.
But this time, Rosie is the real winner. She has absolutely set the gold standard for dealing with a catfish and having a good laugh along the way. Rosie 1 – Catfish 0.
At least they got $3.90.
Bravo, Rosie, Bravo.
Rosie deposited the $3.90 today and photoshopped the receipt to say $3900. Here's a screenshot and link to her FB live video.
Have you ever been catfished? What happened?
Alicia Antonio is the publisher of Bottle Poppin Mama. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Pinterest.
Top Comments
Well, wasn't that entertaining! I hope Rosie has reported this to the police, they might want to check out this Angela person she was going to 'send' the money to - someone real has to pick it up, right?
Why invent a word like "catfishing" which needs to be explained, and sounds cool. Call them what they are: "scammer" and "liars".