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The National Lottery Has Twitter Campaign Hijacked By Twitter Trolls

The National Lottery Has Twitter Campaign Hijacked By Twitter Trolls

Oh dear.

Mark McGowan

Mark McGowan

Internet campaigns are the norm nowadays, as they're the best way to reach a wider audience with a new product, or to raise awareness around something.

However, you really have to think outside the box, as boring, run of the mill content will fall flat on its arse, subsequently failing to do its job. This was proven over the summer by the ridiculousness of some football clubs' signing announcements.

These campaigns can go wrong now and again, though, as people on the internet don't take everything very seriously. Who knew?

The National Lottery launched its campaign to highlight the help that British athletes receive. The Lottery asked people to retweet their #Represent post celebrating athletes' achievements, Metro reports, which automatically sent a message of athletes holding their name on a banner to the Twitter user.

People "hijacked" the Twitter campaign, changing their names to a variety of things, which ranged from funny to offensive.

Some people changed their handles to the names of disgraced celebrities, racist figures, paedophiles or offensive catch phrases, many of which haven't been included for obvious reasons.

The National Lottery quickly shut down the campaign due to the severity of the abuse coming in.

"We are aware that some people are maliciously targeting our British Athletics Twitter campaign with offensive and abhorrent content," the Lottery's official Twitter account tweeted. "We are dealing with this as quickly as possible and are hugely sorry for any offence caused by this malicious act."

It's tough to find a silver lining in all of this, but I guess they did end up trending, which was the initial plan. It was for all the wrong reasons, sadly.

Featured Image Credit: Twitter

Topics: National Lottery, Athletics, Twitter