Evan Morrison didn’t begin defending Diana Nyad’s Cuba–Florida crossing until the summer of 2023. The timing suggests he betrayed his sport for reasons other than high-mindedness.
The World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) posted its “Diana Nyad Cuba–Florida 2013 Swim Report” on August 21, 2022. Not until the Nyad biopic’s publicity push began a year later did Marathon Swimmers Federation co-founder Evan Morrison begin publicly defending Diana. I’ve gathered data from multiple online sources to pinpoint when Morrison flipped. What follows uses Morrison’s 2013 post, “Nyad Agonistes: The anatomy of a social media campaign” (archived), as a model.
At last year’s Oscars, the Nyad biopic was up for two awards, and Diana got to sit in Jennifer Aniston’s lap. “She was crying,” Diana said in a recent interview, “and telling me I was a hero and that the movie meant so much to her.”
It also meant a lot to UraFibber, a Wikipedia editor with one goal: Sabotage the Nyad biopic’s entry.
Detail from “Nyad (film)” revision history. It shows some of the edits UraFibber made on March 9 and 10, 2024.
On Friday, January 19, 2024, Los Angeles Times movie and TV columnist Glenn Whipp wrote, “Oscar nominations arrive bright and early Tuesday morning.” At 1:15 a.m. the next day, a Wikipedia user created a sockpuppet account called “UraFibber.”
According to Wikipedia, a sockpuppet is “a false online identity used for deceptive purposes.” The account holder made 40 total edits, all to “Nyad (film)” and all focused on the 2024 Academy Awards. He made six on January 20, then five on the 24th, the day after the Academy announced the nominations. He made the remaining 29 on March 9 and 10, the day before and the day of the Oscars.
After the announcement of a Diana Nyad biopic, skeptics confronted Nyad fans with facts. The believers responded with nonsense.
On March 4, Diana Nyad announced that Nyad, a biopic about her favorite subject — and mine, for better or worse — would begin filming this summer. While her fans cheered the announcement, a few skeptics tried to inject some reason into the festivities. In particular, they questioned the legitimacy of Diana Nyad’s Cuba-Florida swim. For example:
This did not please Nyad’s devotees. I saved some of their replies and have listed them below.
