Have you heard the L.A. Clippers are going to allow fans to smoke cannabis and even tobacco at the basketball team’s new arena in Inglewood, California? It’s a claim that’s gotten a lot of attention on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in recent days. But it’s not true at all.
“ESPN Sources: The Clippers new arena, Intuit Dome, is planned to have it’s own 21 and older section in the upper bowl that will allow for fans to smoke marijuana or cigarettes,” an X account that looks like it belongs to ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski wrote on Friday.
The tweet has been seen over 7.5 million times, causing many people to wonder if it’s actually true. But if you take a closer look at the account sharing this information, you’ll know why it’s completely fake.
Despite having a blue checkmark and sporting the same photo as the real Adrian Wojnarowski, the account includes the word “fan” in tiny letters, making it clear this isn’t the real Wojnarowski at all. The fake account, which you can see in an annotated screenshot below, also has a disclaimer that reads, “ESPN Senior NBA Insider •parody troll account• NOT affiliated with @wojespn.”
But given the fact that this fake account uses the same photo as the real Wojnarowski and includes the word “fan” in such small letters, it’s easy to see why some people are confused. If a user doesn’t click through to actually look at the account’s profile page, it looks very close to the real thing.
Back when it was known as Twitter, the blue checkmark was given out to notable accounts as a way to fight impersonation. The so-called “verification” badge was actually rolled out in 2009 after baseball legend Tony La Russa filed a lawsuit against the company over an impersonator. But Elon Musk, the owner of X who also changed its name, abolished the old verification system not long after buying the company and now charges $8 for a checkmark. X no longer verifies the identity of anyone willing to pay for the service. All it means now is that a user has $8 to spend.
X has a crowd-sourced fact-checking program called Community Notes where users can issue context or corrections about viral tweets that may have misinformation. Despite being seen by over 7.5 million people, Community Notes has yet to issue a correction for this blatantly bad information.
California banned smoking in most public spaces long ago and was actually the first state in the country to ban smoking in all restaurants in 1995 and in all bars in 1998. But some California cities banned smoking in sports arenas even earlier. San Diego, for instance, banned all smoking in sports facilities in 1991.
Needless to say, even if a large institution wanted to re-introduce cigarette smoking in a public place, there’d simply be no way to get around the indoor smoking laws. But it’s unlikely the Clippers would even want to do such a thing, especially given everything we know about the dangers of secondhand smoke, to say nothing of the toll it can take on the lungs of athletes.
The Clippers didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed Saturday night. I’ll update this post if I hear back. But it’s safe to assume they’re not behind any idea being floated by a troll account on X pretending to be a reporter for ESPN.
