Shaquille O’Neal continues to keep the internet buzzing due to his constant questionable acts.
After being spotted at dinner with fitness influencer Brittany Renner, the 7-foot-1 basketball legend has gone viral again for sliding into another influencer’s DMs.
Last week, O’Neal and Renner were seen enjoying a nice dinner at a Beverly Hills Hotel. Online reports show that many had warned Shaq about the model’s connection to other male athletes and entertainers, with a source telling TMZ that the two are just friends.
Now the NBA Hall of Famer has found himself back in the blogs after another influencer shared their DMs on her Instagram story.
A few days ago, Ariana Josephine Cossie became Twitter’s hottest topic after sparking a debate among people who have jobs and others who make money on OnlyFans, the subscription-based app that allows people to pay for other people’s content, such as photos, videos or live streams.
Cossie, who currently works at The Home Depot, posted a photo of herself from her Twitter account with the caption, “The one job I work at that I get reminded i’m to pretty to work at.”
The tweet was soon discovered by a blog page called Daily Loud, which shared a racy question attached to the photo that read, “Should she make an OnlyFans or keep the home depot job?”
Despite individuals inferring that Cossie would achieve a successful income from OnlyFans, she quickly rejected those comments. She claims it wouldn’t properly align with her lifestyle as a Christian woman, as she often uses her various platforms to speak about her religion.
Due to fans’ assumptions, Cossie received backlash from millions of people who found her comment judgmental toward those who choose to make content available through OnlyFans. As more negative comments from critics began to pour in, Shaq chose to share some words of encouragement to “uplift” the college student’s spirits.
Cossie shared a screenshot of her brief exchange with the retired NBA player that went down in the DMs on her Instagram page. It shows him telling her not to “let them peopl bother u.”
In response, Cossie said, “Thank you Shaq!” He then replied, “Don’t read the comments stuff like that will drive u crazy have a great day tell all your boyfriends i said hello lol.”
Cossie wrote back, “HAHA i will thank you!!”
“When Shaq text you know you doing something right okay,” she penned over the top of her screenshot.
Their interaction went viral and made its way to Instagram, thanks to Hollywood Unlocked, where several commentators assumed that Shaq was “shooting his shot” at Cossie, who supposedly fumbled her opportunity to bag a baller by sharing their messages online.
“Shaq definitely has a type. And that poor girl didn’t realize he was shooting his shot with ‘tell all your boyfriends.’”
“Shaq be getting around don’t he.”
“She should’ve kept that to herself cause that man probably was testing her before he flew her out on a date smh.”
While many believed that Shaq had other motives, Cossie expressed in a recent YouTube video that his message was purely innocent.
“He literally was just uplifting me, obviously he said that because he knew probably I would post it,” she said. “Because it gave context that he wanted me to post it, so I mean he knew what he was doing.”
Cossie continued, “I feel like he was just being on my side and people just took this and ran with it and tried to make it something crazy.”
Shaq has not yet addressed any details surrounding Cossie’s posts.
