Dean Browning is believed to be a straight white man who unsuccessfully ran for a Congressional seat for Pennsylvania. So why was he tweeting that he was a Black gay man?
Confused already? Don’t worry, so are we. In fact, as of this writing, I still don’t know what the hell is going on but let’s try and unfurl this messiness together, shall we?
OK, let’s try this again.
Dean Browning is a washed-up politician. That part is correct.
He loves Trump and often tweets his love for Trump.
On Nov. 8, he tweeted: “What Trump built in 4 years, Biden will destroy in 4 months.”
Of course, everyone came for him because that’s what happens on Twitter, and if you don’t know that, I don’t have time to explain.
Browning then tweeted: “I’m a black gay guy and I can personally say that Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse. Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected—which I never do when democrats are involved.”
OK, let’s do a quick check: Dean Browning is a white man. He loves Trump. He tweeted some dumb pro-Trump shit that had people coming for him on social media.
Everything’s adding up so far.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Dean Browning is a Black gay man.
Many on Twitter, including myself, believed that Dean Browning, like Kevin Durant before him, had merely forgotten to switch to his Black gay man burner account before sending out that tweet.
But Browning doubled down and claimed that he didn’t have a Black gay man burner account; he was, in fact, quoting a message from a Black gay man who left him a message about an administration that was in office some four years ago.
OK, let’s recap, shall we?
Dean Browning is a white man. Dean Browning loves him some Trump so much that he appeared to have a gay Black burner account that he uses to make his points about Trump being inclusive. Dean Browning forgot to switch to his burner account before tweeting that he was a gay Black man. Dean Browning got caught and instead of saying that he was hacked, which is the standard for Twitter fuckery, he doubled down. Twitter remains skeptical.
OK, everyone let’s just take a step back and look at this with clear eyes:
And because the plot is like grits left out overnight, it thickens.
Twitter detectives began combing through all of Browning’s messages and found that someone with the Twitter name “Dan Purdy” had been tweeting as a “Black gay man” whose life has been miraculously changed by Trump’s presidency.
So there you have it: Dan Purdy is the burner account used by…Patti LaBelle’s nephew?
Yes, much like a white man losing a presidential election, Browning couldn’t let it go. The “Dan Purdy” Twitter account has been suspended but that didn’t stop “Dan Purdy” from posting a video confirming that he was in fact “a Black gay man.”
Time for another recap:
All caught up? OK, great. Because, here is where your head is going to explode. Twitter detectives have found that the man in the video claiming to be “Dan Purdy” is, well, I will let Newsweek explain it.
After searching the man’s cartoon avatar, they matched it to a Facebook profile of a user named Byl Holte (and william.m.holte) —who describes himself as an “anti-feminist TV critic” and has multiple articles published on Medium.
Another search for William Holte led to the discovery that a man by that name is the adopted son and nephew of music legend Patti LaBelle.
The singer has posted photos of William to Instagram captioned “my nephew” and spoke about how she adopted a niece and nephew when her sister Jacqueline Holte, died in 1989 (via Oprah).
And there you have it, 2020 is wild as shit, and I’m going to take a nap.