To a casual scroller on TikTok, Carson Beaver’s slide show presented all the necessary credentials to show that his family owned the Buc-ee’s chain of convenience stores. Namely that his last name is Beaver, and he posted a picture that implied as much.

As the post plowed its way to more than 6.5 million views, commenters began debating whether he was telling the truth. And the questions continued for days, even after he added a caption and a comment clarifying that he was joking and that he was, in no way, connected to the family that owned the chain.

“Everybody’s always associated the Buc-ee beaver with me when I introduced myself and they’re like, ‘Do you own Buc-ee’s?’ and it’s just a running joke.” Mr. Beaver said in a phone interview. “So I posted that thinking it would only get like two or three thousand views or likes or whatever — and it imploded.”

He was not alone. On TikTok and beyond, the supposed offspring of celebrities or heirs to major corporations — Marriott, Barnes & Noble, Folgers Coffee — have been revealing themselves through a new trend using the phrase “holy airball.” The catch? Most of them are fake.

The mechanics of the trend are simple: In a series of three slides, users are posting a generic claim about themselves, (“told her my family owns a gas station”) as if they were saying it to a love interest. The second slide features a fictional response (“She said, ‘Oh, like a Shell or Chevron?’”) from the person they’re talking to. And the final slide reveals the surprising information, such as a photo of a Buc-ee’s gas station, and some variation of the phrase “holy airball.”

The origins of the phrase and its usage in this way, often styled with an expletive in the middle, are unclear. But airball is a basketball term for a shot that does not even touch the rim or backboard, so its use implies how badly a person missed.