neither of these people exist, but that was no barrier to online popularitySome inauthentic social media accounts have an obvious motive behind their existence, such as manufacturing credibility as a fake journalist or public figure, astroturfing discussion of a viewpoint, topic, or person, or plain old financial scamming. In other cases, however, no political or financial motive is apparent, and maintaining the fake persona and drawing people into the illusion seems to be an end in itself (a form of catfishing). The more successful of these fake accounts manage to build authentic audiences that accept them as real people and become emotionally invested in the accounts’ imaginary lives. This article focuses on two moderately popular (and presently suspended) inauthentic personas from Twitter/X: “Paul Fox” (@PaulFox50854324), and “Gabby” (@Gabby_UCMaroon, @GabbyRedux, and @gabby_ucm), both of which used StyleGAN-generated face images as their avatars and employed plagiarized photos to embellish their fictitious online lives.Father’s Day with a side of online bullshitThe “Paul Fox” account (@PaulFox50854324) was created in May 2019 and banned by X/Twitter in late June 2023, after a span of slightly over four years. In addition to using a GAN-generated face as a profile image, this account also misrepresented a GAN-generated face as a neighbor’s child in a June 18th, 2023 Father’s Day post. The Father’s Day post in question racked up over 800 reposts in roughly 36 hours, and received hundreds of positive replies from users who, by and large, seemed to believe that the image was a real photograph…GAN-tastic catfishing