How social media and Caleb Wilson made UNC’s whiteout game against Kansas happen

Hubert Davis has said multiple times that, if Caleb Wilson were to run for UNC student body president, the freshman would win. “He knows everybody,” Davis said.

And, as it turns out, he knows what the people want. So when fans wanted a whiteout game for Friday’s marquee matchup between No. 19 Kansas and No. 25 North Carolina — the first time the two storied programs will meet in Chapel Hill — Wilson made it happen. But it didn’t come easily, or without a bit of conflict. What started as a stray idea on social media quickly turned into a full-blown campaign, one that pitted a group of energized online fans and a freshman phenom’s influence against UNC’s own marketing plans.

In the end, the fans won.

But how did this happen? To the best knowledge of the UNC Twitterverse — or whatever word you want to use for this online cluster of devoted supporters — the first serious suggestion of a whiteout can be traced to the X account named “Armandoavenue.”

“Would be cool if we did a whiteout for the Kansas game on Friday,” read the Wednesday evening post from the Armandoavenue account.

The UNC-Kansas whiteout idea spreads

The user, who did not wish to share his name with The N&O, said he shared his thoughts online“ without any expectation.” From there, X user William McCallister — another active Tar Heel fan account — picked up the baton.

McCallister looped in the UNC Barstool account to spread the word and engaged a massive group chat of other North Carolina fan accounts — this network includes “like, a hundred people,” he estimates — to get the ball rolling.

The next step was obvious.

“Everyone was like, ‘We need to tag Caleb Wilson,’” McCallister said.

From there, the operation went into overdrive. The troops mobilized. Replies flew. Mentions stacked up.

Wilson’s response came quickly. Within an hour, the freshman replied to McCallister with his mark of approval: “I couldn’t be more down.”

Caleb Wilson enters the chat

But McCallister’s work wasn’t done. They needed more than a reply — they needed Wilson to make his own post.

That required a bit of light nudging. Or, more accurately…

“We pretty much just spammed him. I feel so bad for him,” McCallister said with a laugh. “We had probably the entire UNC burnerverse behind this one. We spammed him for a while.”

One more hour passed — which, in today’s world of instant gratification and push notifications, might as well be a lifetime — but Wilson ultimately obliged to the many requests from McCallister and his keyboard army.

At 8:10 p.m. Wednesday, Wilson posted a GIF of himself with the caption, “Whiteout Friday 7PM.” It has since garnered more than 276,000 views on X.

McCallister’s work was done. Or was it?

“We thought it was official, but then we were all in the group chat like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if The Rams Club people are gonna know,’” McCallister said. “So we need the official (UNC men’s basketball) account to post about it.”

Verizon and the blue merch

There was just one problem: Verizon, the sponsor for Friday’s matchup against Kansas, had planned to hand out 2,500 blue T-shirts. As of Thursday afternoon, UNC was sticking to that plan. A post from the official @GoHeels account confirmed it: “STUDENTS! We’ve got shirts for the first 2,500 through Entry C on Friday, thanks to our friends from Verizon.”

But the online community — led by Armandoavenue and McCallister — wasn’t having it.

“I was thinking about how big of a game it was for the program,” Armandoavenue wrote in a statement to the N&O. “It’s by far the biggest home non-conference game on the schedule, and I thought back to the previous two seasons where they held whiteouts in big non-conference games. I love seeing them do it and hope they do it at least once a year. So given that this was the biggest non-conference game, against a blue blood, I thought it was the perfect opportunity.”

And so the burners did their thing: more posts, more comments. Replies. Quote tweets, even. Despite the effort, McCallister wasn’t sure their flood-the-zone approach would work — especially this close to tipoff. He even worried, for a moment, that he’d gotten Wilson in trouble.

“Yeah, I feel bad,” McCallister posted Thursday afternoon. “Sorry @CalebWilson2025, we really appreciate you tho… go ball out Friday.”

Two hours later, Wilson responded again: “Just wait a sec.”

Little did McCallister and his internet friends know, the North Carolina athletic department was already rethinking its approach.

“We saw Caleb’s tweet… and that kind of ran,” UNC senior associate athletic director Steve Kirschner told the N&O. “And yesterday (Thursday), we decided, ‘Why don’t we shelve the T-shirts idea?’”

Verizon is still sponsoring the Kansas game, Kirschner said, but agreed to hand out its blue shirts another day. It was short notice, sure, but the athletic department figured that between Wilson’s reach and the audience on its official accounts, it could get the word out.

By Thursday evening, an official joint decision had been made — both internally and with Verizon.

“Let’s have some fun with it and run with Caleb,” Kirschner said. “Let’s do the whiteout.”

The internet campaign’s finale

But the announcement — the finale — needed its star. So North Carolina’s social team grabbed Wilson for a quick video, hit post at 6:10 p.m. Thursday and, just like that, the whiteout saga reached its conclusion.

“I wanted a whiteout and it’s happening,” Wilson said with a grin in the 11-second clip. “Shoutout Verizon for keeping the blue shirts in the box… it’s officially a whiteout.”

McCallister, just as a player might after an on-court triumph, took a moment to celebrate before pointing to the passer.

“If there’s one thing you get from this story, it’s that it wasn’t just me or Armandoavenue — it was all of them, all the UNC burner accounts, who got behind this,” McCallister said. “We were just so happy.”

For years, critics have called UNC fans the “wine-and-cheese crowd.” McCallister knows this as much as anybody.

But, if his internet campaign proved one thing, it’s this: Sometimes a little whining can change the color of the crowd.

This story was originally published November 7, 2025 at 4:00 PM.