Mia Khalifa Got in Staged Twitter Fight With Fake Fansided Writer the Site Initially Insisted Was Real

Mia Khalifa has a weekly football column for Time Inc. site Fansided, as we detailed last week. She’s already stirring the pot. As detailed in full by Awful Announcing, Fansided “columnist” Burt Gertson, who was described as a 54-year sportswriting vet with experience at the New York Post and has been “writing” for Fansided for about six weeks, went after the former adult film star in his “column” and then the two had a Twitter scrap.

For example:

After this exchange, Awful Announcing’s Andrew Bucholtz reached out to Fansided editor-in-chief Jim Cavan, who said that Gertson “is indeed a real person,” “runs his own account and writes his own columns,” and is “absolutely” accomplishing what the site wanted. After AA’s post went live, Fansided’s Twitter account issued a lengthy statement admitting the whole thing was a ruse:

"There seems to be some confusion / anger over @BurtGertson‘s column. Burt’s column has been running for weeks. It is fictional satire. This week’s column tackled the topic of @miakhalifa coming aboard as a contributor. We thought it would be funny to imagine Burt’s reaction. When @awfulannouncing asked us questions, we decided to have some fun with them. It was honestly meant to be in good fun. If the humor didn’t land, that’s on us. But it was absolutely meant as humor. And yes, Mia was in on the joke. From the start. The point of Burt’s column is to highlight generational chasms in the sportswriting world. That’s where Burt comes in. He has a purpose. We understand this was probably very confusing for a lot of people. But it was honestly meant to be theatrical commentary. Honestly."

Let’s just move on and never speak of this again.