Gage Skidmore
Audio By Carbonatix
On Friday, an Instagram follower reached out to me asking about an article I supposedly wrote in August that they couldn’t find online. The screenshot they sent was of a story called “Historic Trump Painting Could Fetch $5 Million at Auction,” complete with my byline and the Observer‘s header.
Predictably, the account that posted the screenshot belongs to the creator of the painting, an Atlanta-based artist who goes by Artlanta. He has multiple subsequent posts about the painting (including one where the price is bumped up to $10 million), but the purported Observer story is the only news article he shared. Lucky me for getting that scoop, right?
Not exactly.
I have no idea exactly how many people saw that post, but seeing as the account has over 1 million followers, I feel the need to clarify that this story doesn’t exist.
This was honestly a jumpscare.
Screenshot from Instagram
I’ve never written a story about overpriced Donald Trump fan art (until now, I guess) and the Observer has never published anything of the sort. Based on some common words, I think the headline may have been edited over my story about a historic Superman comic that sold for $5 million in Dallas earlier this year.
Why did this artist hijack my name and my employer’s brand to share their good news? You’ve probably already figured this out, but I’ll say it anyway: It doesn’t seem to have happened at all.
The painting does exist and Artlanta did have it signed by Trump at one of his rallies, but I can’t find any evidence of the painting selling for what he’s claiming it’s worth.
I guess you could argue that the word “could” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline in terms of plausible deniability, but there’s no such technicality that excuses using the Observer‘s logo.
It’s awkward and uncomfortable to see my name and publication dragged into this disinformation, and my bosses aren’t thrilled about it either. If you see this floating around online, do us a favor and smash that report button.
At the time of publication, Artlanta has not responded to our request to take the post down.
