Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, recently admitted to having faked fan questions and censored responses from the late rock icon Ozzy Osbourne during what was supposed to be a genuine Q&A session. Reflecting on the incident, Schwartz now says he regrets the experience.
“I cheated,” he wrote in a post on X Thursday.
Schwartz recounted his time working at WebMaster, where he was tasked with managing fan interactions for Osbourne and the rest of Black Sabbath using the company’s ConferenceRoom software. As part of the role, he typed out both the fan questions and the band’s responses — a process he now views as a personal failure, despite the outward success of the event.
“To me personally, it was a failure, but to everyone else it was a success,” he reflected, just days after Osbourne’s passing at the age of 76.
Fans showed little interest in anyone other than Osbourne
Schwartz, who described himself as a fast typist, explained that he was tasked with speaking to the band members over the phone, relaying fan questions, and typing out their responses in real time.
However, it soon became apparent that fans were only interested in Ozzy Osbourne. “I specifically asked the moderators to give me questions that weren’t for Ozzy,” he said. “There just weren’t any.”
To avoid excluding the other band members, Schwartz kept a stash of pre-written “canned questions” on standby in case of technical difficulties — which he eventually resorted to using.
“I passed a canned question to each of the other band members in rotation,” he explained. “Then I blended whatever I could make out from what they said over the phone with the canned responses provided by their manager.”
Looking back, Schwartz admitted he felt disheartened by the experience. “At the time, I felt really bad about the whole thing. It wasn’t the authentic interaction with celebrities that I wanted it to be and that I tried to make it,” he said, noting that only “two or three” genuine fan questions ever made it through to the band.
Schwartz admits to editing Osbourne’s responses before sharing them
Schwartz also admitted that he removed the profanity from Osbourne’s answers:
“Ozzy’s answer featured the C-word a lot. The bad C-word. The one that Americans really don’t like to say. It was pretty close to the only word I could hear clearly.”
“I typed up Ozzy’s answer as best I could, though I probably got it completely wrong because of the terrible connection,” Schwartz admitted. “I also censored the C-words,” he added.
Meanwhile, Cointelegraph reported Friday that memecoins inspired by Osbourne surged in the wake of his passing. One token, The Mad Man (OZZY), skyrocketed over 16,800% to reach a price of $0.003851, pushing its market cap to $3.85 million.
