This week, the Twitter account for RadioShack went from just weird to totally apeshit. In short order, the company’s entire feed became a veritable trove of NSFW material, including musings about vibrators, “big tittes” (misspelling theirs), and tweets trolling celebrities and other corporate accounts. Remarks ranged from “sometimes i just feel like i should do more coke with @elonmusk” to “Lick ma balls @Wendys.”
The ridiculous tweets included, but were not limited to, stuff like this...
Or this...
Or even this...
People were left wondering what the heck had happened. Had a 19-year-old frat bro hacked into the electronics store’s socials?
You might not have known that RadioShack had a Twitter account, and a verified one at that. Or that the company even still existed. Surprise, it does! But just barely. While people assumed that the absurd spew of adolescent humor was the result of cybercriminals, the truth is far worse: RadioShack has now joined the ranks of other ailing companies who have all but died, only to be resurrected as an undead version of their former selves through the gangrenous power of crypto.
RadioShack filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy back in 2015, but in 2020, a majority of the company’s assets were purchased by a firm called Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV), which promised to rehabilitate it. Wired reports that REV put RadioShack on the blockchain. What that means for a chain of IRL stores: REV launched a site called RadioShackSwap and an associated token called $RADIO, which is currently worth $0.009866, according to CoinMarketCap. The flurry of ridiculous tweets were ostensibly an effort to promote this new venture. REV did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Whatever attention-seeking charlatan is at the helm of RadioShack’s Twitter, they appear to give zero fucks. But the buffoonery is also working as a PR strategy. When was the last time you thought about RadioShack?
What a world. Who knew that the same company that once sold your dad pagers and fax machines would one day be tweeting about dick sizes? If you want to check out even more of the horror, click here.