A white US politician has sparked an internet mystery after he tweeted saying he was black, gay and supported US President Donald Trump.
Dean Browning, a former Republican congressional candidate for Pennsylvania, tweeted on Tuesday that he was a "black gay guy" - despite his Twitter profile picture clearly showing he was white.
"I can personally say that [Barack] Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse," he wrote.
"Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected - which I never do when democrats are involved."
The only true part of the Tweet was that he supported Trump - Browning's Twitter bio says he is "a proud pro-life and pro-2A Christian conservative dedicated to enacting common sense solutions to Keep America Great".
Although he swiftly deleted the tweet, the mystery only spiralled further, as he claimed the tweet had been a message from "a follower".
"Sorry if context was not clear," he wrote.
People theorised that Browning had simply forgotten to log into his burner account - an account in someone else's name, used to pretend to be a minority Trump voter.
Many Twitter sleuths claimed Browning's fake account handle was @DanPurdy322, after Washington Post reporter Philip Bump claimed the handle regularly responds to Browning's posts.
The person behind the account frequently posted racist, sexist remarks like "black ppl can't count" and "black women will be the death of america".
However it got even weirder when a man claiming to own the handle @DanPurdy322 uploaded a video insisting he was real, had sent a message to Browning and that Browning accidentally posted it "somehow" and that was "the end of the story".
Still, it was not the end of the story.
Social media users then discovered similarities between the man in the video claiming to be behind the @DanPurdy322 account and Byl Holte - the adopted son and nephew of singer-songwriter Patti Labelle.
Holte has written several articles about "garbage feminism" in media and complaining about anti-racism. He proudly refers to himself as an "anti-feminist TV critic".
The identity of the man in the video has not been confirmed and the account @DanPurdy322 has been suspended.
