When the Powerball jackpot climbed to a staggering $1.8 billion over the holiday break, it didn’t take long for the news to spark excitement and confusion. The winning ticket was sold in Cabot, Arkansas, a small town about 30 minutes outside of Little Rock. For Bobby Bones, who grew up in Arkansas and spent years playing baseball and football in Cabot, that detail alone was enough to set off a chain reaction.
As soon as the location was announced, Bobby’s phone started lighting up. Friends, acquaintances, and even distant connections all wanted to know the same thing: Did you win the Powerball? Or at least, Do you know who did? To have a little fun with it, Bobby posted a tongue-in-cheek TikTok video joking that he’d won. Everyone who knew him well understood it was satire, a bit built around the absurdity of suddenly becoming a billionaire. But the internet didn’t get the memo. Within hours, the joke snowballed. Three separate videos went viral at the same time, each racking up over a million views in just six hours. Clips popped up across TikTok claiming Bobby Bones had won nearly $2 billion. Some people celebrated for him, others questioned why someone “already rich” would win the lottery, and a few even suggested he was the perfect person to win because he’d “do good with the money.” The joke had officially taken on a life of its own.
Soon, people weren’t just seeing Bobby’s original video, they were seeing other people’s videos reacting to it. The rumor spread fast enough that it followed him offline, too. Over the break, Bobby was stopped in public twice by people who didn’t say hello or mention the show, but instead asked directly for financial help. Rent. Mortgage payments. Real, personal requests, based entirely on the belief that he’d just won the Powerball. Every direct message told a similar story. That was the moment the humor wore off. While the situation was bizarre, it was also eye-opening. It offered a small glimpse into what actual lottery winners experience overnight: not knowing who’s genuine, who’s hopeful, and who suddenly sees you as a solution to their problems.
To be clear, Bobby never won the Powerball. The $1.8 billion jackpot, after taxes and the lump sum option, would have come out to roughly $450 million anyway. Still life-changing, but far from billionaire status. And had he actually won, he admits he wouldn’t have shared it online at all. Big news like that would’ve been handled thoughtfully, and likely shared first on his show, not through a joke about buying an extra box of Girl Scout Thin Mints.
Once it became obvious that people weren’t in on the joke, Bobby quietly took the videos down and set the record straight. The real winner, of course, was someone in Cabot, someone whose life truly was changed overnight. And while Bobby didn’t walk away with a Powerball ticket worth millions, he did walk away with a viral reminder of how quickly misinformation spreads, how powerful the internet can be, and how thin the line is between a joke and a headline. For the record, Bobby Bones did not win the Powerball, but someone nearby did. And that part really is crazy.