Update:
As of March 5th, I tried to access the MACArtists twitter page, and I received a HTTP 404 not found error instead. It looks like they self-deleted, got removed, or something - I've no idea what happened, only that the account doesn't seem to exist anymore. Has anyone managed to access anything more than a 404? I just hope they got deleted before they filched anyone's personal information from their 'giveaway'...You've heard of fake MAC cosmetics, now check out the newest fake to hit the block - a fake MAC Twitter account! For years MAC has been plagued by ever-increasingly sophisticated fake eyeshadows, pigments and blushes, but now it look's like MAC's got a new problem on it's hands. It turns out that user MACartists on Twitter isn't actually affiliated with MAC. Unfortunately, it seems like most of their followers think they're following an actual MAC account, so I thought I'd just run a quick post on it to alert everyone.
This was discovered by Karlasugar, who runs the very helpful and positively awe-inspiring swatch blog The Next Best Thing to Going Shopping Yourself, and reported on her Twitter account.
According to Karla, real MAC artists have usernames like MAC_Gordon_E, MAC_Vimi_J, MAC_Gina_B, MAC_Gregory_A, MAC_Bianca_A, and MAC_Caroline_D. Those are all real MAC artist accounts.
For anyone wanting to follow real MAC artists, there is also a list of actual MAC makeup artists who are on twitter, located at http://www.macartiststweets.com.
Naturally I'm puzzled. Why anyone would want to pretend to be a makeup company is beyond me. I've heard of people setting up twitter accounts as a form of satire - anyone vaguely familiar with the finance industry will recall the (now suspended) fake twitter account set up to mock the John Boden incident, in which the managing director at the investment bank Thomas Wiesel Partners sent this email telling his underlings to get back to work, on Good Friday too, no less: "We are an investment bank. Unless you are an orthodox something, please get into the office. We are getting paid minimum wage for a reason – we are not making money, which is hard to do from home. Join Wells Fargo and become a teller if you want to take holidays." The fake twitter account (screenshot and more info here) mocked Boden, with tweets like "Analyst slacking again. Headed to mosque to get him back to work. Traffic sucks", "Just made plans for sushi tonight. Man, I love chinese food!", and of course, "Unless you are an orthodox something, please get into the office."
But in thise case, MACartists is obviously no satire twitter account. The account is answering people's questions about MAC products, giving out "MAC Tips", making announcements on upcoming products and collections, and even holding contests under the guise of being affiliated to MAC. The last one is particularly disturbing - even if you won the contest, would you really want to hand over your address and details to someone you cannot trust? If it was some sort of satirical account, set up purely for the purpose of humour, I would have found it funny, but in this case, I found this about as repulsive as those dodgy MAC eyeshadows with the too-thick print logo, the lousy colours, and the toxic, untested ingredients.
Of course, if anyone wants to follow MACartists for whatever reason, I'm not stopping them, or even saying that they shouldn't follow MACartists. I just thought that people should know that they aren't actually affiliated to MAC. If they know that and still choose to follow them, that's their right, but at least they should make the choice informed, knowing who they are really following.
