Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg did not call Texans drones with nothing to live for

Facebook’s founder did not say that Texans are drones who have nothing to live for.

Still, a Texas journalist’s spoof of a Mark Zuckerberg Facebook post about his stops in Waco and Waxahachie on Wednesday caused a few people to think OMG, Zuckerberg said that?

Again, Zuckerberg didn't say that.

Quick timeline:

--At 6:33 p.m. Texas time Wednesday, Zuckerberg--who was recently described in a CNN news story as newly sounding like a budding office-seeker--saluted Texans he’d spent a little time with in a Facebook post that opened: "Heading back home after a great few days in Texas."

Zuckerberg went on to say kindly things about the people he’d met that day in Waxahachie, West and Waco before closing his post with a web link to photos from his U.S. travels after giving thanks to "everyone who has shared their stories with me over the last few days. I’ll remember this experience for a very long time," Zuckerberg said.

--At 12:18 a.m. Thursday, Austin-based journalist Christopher Hooks presented what looked like Zuckerberg’s Facebook post below Hooks’ tweet stating: "The full Zuckerberg post is really something. Can't see this playing at the Iowa State Fair."

Next came what looked like the Zuckerberg post extolling the folks he’d seen in Waco, Waxahachie and West and so on.

About halfway down, though, the post’s celebration of Texans visited by Zuckerberg veered by stating: "These people have absolutely nothing to live for. And yet, every day, they turn their faces toward the sun and resume the drudgery they have inherited from countless generations. We could all learn something from these simple, earnest drones -- these drones I have come to love and cherish in the course of my journey across this unremarkable corner of the American heartland." This version of the post closed: "Life is pain."

--Hooks shortly drew two quick queries from a Twitter follower about Zuckerberg saying such things. And at 12:23 a.m., Hooks tweeted in reply: "(it’s a joke)."

We reached out to Hooks, wondering where the joke Facebook post originated.

By email, Hooks told us he concocted it himself. He elaborated:

"I only tweeted it once — it was one of a string of Zuckerberg jokes I made last night. I thought his visit to North Texas, potentially in anticipation of some kind of political run, was inherently funny, as was the language he used in the real post, which got circulated on Twitter last night. He's not a man who is famous for his human warmth, and he's richer than God, and the idea of him dropping into talk to the folk in Waco and Waxahachie and pretending to have learned some great lesson about America seemed ludicrous to me. Particularly that third paragraph.

"So I tacked on an ending to it that I thought was funny, highlighting his alienation, and tweeted it out. Only did that once. 30 retweets isn't a lot for twitter, and many if not most of the people who did that are people i know who would have been in on the joke. But I did see some people think it was real. Guess it should have been more outlandish."

After our inquiry, and a little before 2 p.m. Thursday, Hooks said in a tweet that "enough people have inquired about this," meaning his version of Zuckerberg's post, "that I want to state clearly that it isn't real." At the time, his original tweet with the not-Zuckerberg post had been retweeted more than 30 times and liked 185 times.

We emailed Facebook’s press team about this and didn’t immediately hear back.