After Burger King and Jeep fall victim, MTV and BET hack themselves for publicity

By Cory Bergman 

Capitalizing on the buzz around Burger King and Jeep’s hacked Twitter accounts, MTV and BET hacked each other in a coordinated publicity stunt Tuesday afternoon. While a handful of news organizations reported that hackers had taken over the accounts, it didn’t take long for Twitter users to discover it was likely a big hoax.

It all started with these two tweets, sent seconds apart:

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But sharp-eyed Twitter users noticed that the style of the tweets were different than the Burger King and Jeep hacks. And MTV’s marketing director had posted a heads-up — complete with hashtag — moments before the first hacked tweets were sent:

About an hour later, MTV came clean:

Which generated a wide range of reaction, from LOLs to “lame.”

As Buzzfeed points out, this isn’t the first time MTV has hacked itself. Back in September 1998, MTV replaced much of its website with the message, “JF was here” to promote an online fictional character named “Johnny Fame” for the Video Music Awards.

As CNET reported back then, the fake hack generated a bit of a backlash.

What do you think about today’s Twitter hack? Genius? Or in bad taste?

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