The real former student, a man who attended a school where Walz taught, told The Post that they never met. He said he was dismayed to see the video showing someone using his name to make the claims.
Matthew Metro didn’t recognize the face that popped up on his cellphone screen when he clicked a link that a friend texted him last week. But after hitting play on the online video, he was dismayed by what he saw.
“My name is Matthew Metro,” said the man in the video, who went on to describe life as a student decades ago at a high school in Minnesota where Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz was a teacher. Some of the details — including about being at the school when Walz worked there — matched the biography of the real Metro. But the man in the video went further, leveling fabricated allegations against Walz, whom the real Metro said he never met.
Millions of people have viewed social media posts containing the video since it was published Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter. For some viewers, the use of Metro’s name and verifiable biographical details created an aura of credibility around the false allegations. Not so for the real Metro, whom The Washington Post located in Hilo, Hawaii.
What’s insane to me is that someone clearly looked for a list of people to find a REAL name, but didn’t bother checking if the owner of that name was still alive and able to say “hey that isn’t me, they’re lying about being me”
Viral disinformation still works even when proven to be false.