Bot Takeover: Multiple golf accounts on Twitter are getting MILLIONS of followers out of no where

Something bizarre is happening in the golf corner of the internet, and I genuinely can’t stop thinking about it. Two of the most prominent golf accounts on X have seen their follower counts explode into the millions basically overnight, and the whole thing reeks of bots. Let me lay out just how strange the numbers are, because they don’t make any sense.

The Curious Case of Dan Rapaport and No Laying Up

Two months ago Dan Rapaport was at 100k followers on @X. Now he’s at 4.4 million?

Three months ago No Laying Up was at 250k on @X. Now they’re at 4.5 million?

How much did these BOTS cost? @brianrolapp @PGATOURComms pic.twitter.com/LQX8ySS7Q0

— LIV Golf Insider (@LIVTracking) August 19, 2026

The Numbers Don’t Add Up, Golf Twitter

Two months ago, Dan Rapaport was sitting at 100k followers on X. Now he’s at 4.4 million. Three months ago, No Laying Up was at 250k. Now they’re at 4.5 million.

How does that happen? These are two established, well-known golf accounts that had spent years building modest, respectable followings, and suddenly they’ve both rocketed into Cristiano Ronaldo territory at the exact same time.

Honestly, I’m not even mad about it.

I wouldn’t mind a few bots padding out my own follower count, let’s be real. But it’s genuinely bizarre that two prominent golf accounts went skyrocketing simultaneously, and it appears to be happening to a whole bunch of accounts at once. The growth is completely inconsistent with any natural, organic pattern.

Following the Trail on Dan Rapaport

The Rapaport timeline is especially wild when you break it down. He sat around 650k in mid-April 2026, climbed to roughly 2.8 million by early July with sustained 30-45k daily gains, and now he’s at 4.4 million.

That X 3.4 million. All those accounts were created a couple weeks ago and all have zero followers 😂 pic.twitter.com/AtDc3HNnBy

— Zay (@ZayJ42) August 19, 2026

Here’s the problem with that: golf accounts almost never add tens of thousands of REAL followers per day. That’s just not how organic growth works, especially in a niche like golf media and when you dig into it, the engagement rates relative to the follower totals look badly diluted, which is exactly what you’d expect if a huge chunk of those followers aren’t real people.

What’s Actually Going On…Probably

The explanation that’s emerged is pretty telling. According to reporting, multiple golf accounts, including NLU, Rapaport, and others like Michael Kim, got hit by waves of low-quality bot followers starting around spring 2026.

People who actually went and checked the follower lists kept seeing the same tell-tale pattern over and over: no profile picture, following only 10 to 30 accounts, zero or near-zero followers of their own, and generic random usernames. Classic bot signatures.

This was reported in real time back in May, right around when NLU first crossed 1 million.

An X insider contact described it as external “testing the fences” or bot activity, with these accounts being collateral damage rather than something the creators actually went out and bought and notably, X was apparently aware of the whole thing and said they wouldn’t penalize the affected accounts.

So this doesn’t appear to be Rapaport or NLU purchasing bot packages to juice their numbers. There’s no documented history of professional golf media buying bots, and the targets have denied any purchase. It reads more like these accounts got caught in the crossfire of some larger bot operation.

The Coordinated Attack Theory

Some people are floating the theory that this could actually be a coordinated effort to “bot” these accounts on purpose, flooding them with fake followers in an organized attempt to get them flagged or taken offline.

Does that actually happen? Honestly, I have no idea.

It sounds like something out of a conspiracy forum, but given how coordinated and simultaneous these spikes have been across multiple golf accounts, it’s at least worth keeping an eye on.

If someone wanted to mess with a bunch of golf media personalities all at once, maybe from a failed golf league that attempted to sabotage the sport, artificially inflating them with garbage bot followers would be a strange but plausible way to do it.

The NLU Angle Is Pretty Funny

I’m a casual No Laying Up listener myself, they’re my go-to golf podcast around the majors and their YouTube videos are excellent background noise, and apparently they addressed this on their pod.

According to commenters, the NLU guys were genuinely baffled by the whole thing and were deliberately waiting to see who would be the first person to publicly notice and bring it up, because they were so confused by it themselves.

That’s a pretty funny way to handle suddenly gaining four million mystery followers. Just sit back and wait for someone else to point out the elephant in the room.

Welcome to Bot Land

Regardless of the cause, the increase is genuinely insane, and it’s left me questioning reality a little bit. When I scroll the replies on these accounts now, I have no idea whether I’m looking at actual humans or bots. We might just be living in bot land from here on out, where you can’t trust that anyone engaging with anything online is a real person.

There’s a cynical takeaway lurking in here too. So much for hard work and good content, right? If follower counts can just balloon by millions through bot packages, whether purchased or externally dumped, it drives up X’s monetization payments and makes the whole follower-count metric completely meaningless.

NLU sat at 100k to 200k for YEARS back when they had great content and were genuinely likeable. Now the number means nothing.

Worth Monitoring The Situation.

Look, I don’t have the answers here. I don’t know if this is a coordinated attack, random bot collateral damage, or something else entirely but it’s a genuinely fascinating little internet mystery, and it’s a window into how broken follower metrics have become in 2026.

Two golf accounts going from niche to eight-figure-adjacent overnight, nobody quite sure why, and X apparently just shrugging and letting it ride.

Something’s clearly not organic here, and it’s worth keeping an eye on to see how it shakes out. Until then, if you’re one of my four million new bot followers reading this, welcome aboard. Glad to have you, even if you don’t technically exist.

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