It does not take very much to construct a military career on social media. Operation names and unit histories are public, photographs of serving personnel are everywhere, and badges, ranks and the language used by the Armed Forces can be picked up by anybody willing to spend some time looking for them.

Put enough of those things together and, to an audience unfamiliar with military life, the result can appear remarkably convincing.

A UK Defence Journal investigation into a series of TikTok accounts linked to a man named Cameron Nell found exactly that. The accounts presented their operator as a former Royal Marines colonel who had served between 2012 and 2020, including with 40 Commando and 42 Commando, while posts listed deployments, exercises and a career that supposedly took him from leaving school to senior commissioned rank in around eight years.

It was detailed enough to attract attention from people familiar with the Armed Forces, some of whom had already begun questioning the story before the UK Defence Journal became involved. With their assistance, including people with first-hand knowledge of the Royal Marines, we worked through the dates, units, terminology, exercises, photographs and claimed progression through the ranks, before checking the central service claims independently through official channels.

The Royal Marines career being presented online was false, of course.

What followed was not simply a story about somebody giving himself a rank he had never...

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