Kim Kardashian-related tweet has EPA’s water office apologizing

An errant Kim Kardashian-related tweet from the EPA’s Office of Water earned some Official U.S. Government Agency Attention on Tuesday morning.

“I’m now a C-List celebrity in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Come join me and become famous too by playing on iPhone!” said the initial Monday-night tweet, which included a link to the crazy-successful game app that launched in June with the reality-TV diva’s endorsement.

The curious tweet stayed live for about three hours and had Twitter abuzz.

“Whoops…our bad. Sorry about tweet. Upside - more attention for the Office of Water (https://water.epa.gov ), thanks @KimKardashian,” the Evironmental Protection Agency branch wrote Tuesday morning.

See, even when she’s not directly involved, Kardashian has a way of shining a spotlight on things. Including things as unglamorous as a faceless organization “working for clean water for all Americans.”

Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was the top downloaded app in the Apple online store Tuesday, according to the iTunes store’s free-apps chart. In the game, the user creates a celebrity in their likeness, then, through quests, attempts to become a superstar.

And while Kim K fans go nuts over the game -- which of course features in-app purchases -- Kardashian stands to earn $85 million from it by the end of the year, TMZ reported. Bloomberg backs up the notion that game maker expects to gross about $200 million from it by year’s end, before giving Kim her cut.

Twitter was enthralled with and puzzled by the initial post. The tweet was deleted around 9:45 p.m.

Michigan Congressman John Dingell had some questions and attempted to get to the bottom of the situation.
“I’m the last original author of the Clean Water Act, but I have no idea who/what a Kardashian is and I rarely play games. You OK, @EPAwater?” Dingell tweeted.

Why the tweet was posted by the account was not immediately clear. The verified account, which has 52,000 followers, may have been hacked, or it’s possible that a social media manager meant to tweet the message from a personal account.

Either way, the Internet was having a field day with it.

The previous tweet from the @EPAwater account -- which urged followers to “#ditchthemyth about our proposal to protect clean water. Read the facts at https://go.usa.gov/XdkQ” -- had only four retweets and one favorite.

As for the Kardashian missive? By the time it went missing from the @EPAwater page it had more than 3,000 retweets, with the sentiment in favor of laughing.

Said @mcmcarthyjames: “I really hope no one gets fired for this because it made me laugh for hours!”

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