Anyone else seeing an influx of blog headlines that go “Updated: [Thing That We Just Wrote About] Is A Hoax”?
While Internet hoaxes have been around since the Soviet Union wanted to join Usenet in 1984 (remember LonelyGirl15?), we’ve had quite a few doozies this week, from the woman who got a tattoo of 152 of her Facebook friends on her arm, to the eHarmony user tearing up over her love of cats, to the kidnapped lesbian Syrian blogger turning out to be a not kidnapped married guy in Scotland. Heh.
People have always been gullible, and gullible people having access to methods of dissemination like Facebook and Twitter only turns their folly up to eleven. But aren’t we as reporters paid to be filters of news, in essence paid to know better? Then why the rampant media coverage of every single one of these hoaxes?
The only answer I can come up with is that the demands of churnalism (or the recently dubbed “hamsterization” of journalism) and the quest for advertising traffic are only increasing for bloggers as more and more readers spend more and more time and money online. This begs the question: How many of us uncritically posting on incredulous rumors and unverified viral stories are cynically calculating how even more traffic will inevitably come from our correction posts (“Update: This Was A Hoax, Again”)?
Perhaps the more innocent among us are fooled by the fact that the Internet has also increased the amount of ridiculous but true news. Media frenzies like #Weinergate and Sarah Palin’s description of Paul Revere’s ride remind us that there is plenty of bona fide news that people wish was fake, making the tech media landscape pretty much a crapshoot for bloggers focused on speed.
Even we covered that Facebook Friends tattoo story as if it were serious news. And how I wished that that story were real, letting me transform it into some bloated pseudo-intellectual weekend think piece about the ephemerality of online friendships and the quest for permanence in a digital age. Instead you guys get this.
It was only after I discovered that the susyj87 YouTube user account only had uploaded one video prior to “My Social Tattoo” and any kind of identifying details about the poster were nowhere to be found did I drop it as a viable source for reblogging, moving on (quickly as always) to the next source of news. But man, like everybody else, I wanted to believe that some idiot got this breathtakingly dumb tattoo. I mean it could happen, right?
In 2011 a retweet can function as the online equivalent of gawking at a car crash, even when the story seems too good (or more likely, bad) to be true. Perhaps this is why the hashtag #SeriouslyMcDonalds was a trending topic this morning, after a sign mandating African American McDonald’s patrons pay a $1.50 surcharge went viral. Even McDonald’s Twitter account quickly declared this a “hoax”, but the #SeriouslyMcDonalds hashtag continues to appear in around 20 tweets a second.
Perhaps the most interesting hoax story to come out of an slow summer week otherwise filled with Apple news, was the tale of a David Voelkert, who was arrested after his ex-wife lured him into revealing his plans to murder her, by posing as a teen admirer on Facebook.
While the initial wave of stories were along the lines of “Man Arrested After Wife’s Facebook Teen Ruse SHOCKER ,” the updates to the story provided a very interested interesting twist, as it turns out that Voelkert suspected that his wife was behind the fake profile and went to a notary in order to prove himself innocent before sending the otherwise incriminating messages.
Voelkert did what we bloggers should be doing more of, taking what happens online with a grain of salt. Granted, he probably had way more time.
Image: Yfrog
New from the “Dear God, no” pile comes Planes, flying your way in 2013 from DisneyToon Studios, the same people that brought you The Lion King 1 1/2. What do you mean, you don’t remember that one? It was a classic, retelling the same story as The Lion King, just from a different point of view. Why bother trying to make a proper sequel to one of your most successful films, when you can cobble together another one from the dregs on the cutting room floor?
Unfortunately, it seems that our beloved Pixar movies are heading down the same route, now that they’ve been swallowed up by the Mouse. A trailer for Planes was released yesterday on YouTube and, although the animation looks to be on a par with Pixar’s, I seriously doubt that this direct-to-DVD/Blu-ray film will come anywhere near Pixar’s caliber. Even though the first Cars movie was essentially a retelling of Doc Hollywood, it still had enough originality and excitement to make it one of Pixar’s most popular films. Note I said “most popular,” not “best,” and that’s probably the whole point.
Disney is very good at making money, Pixar is very good at making excellent movies. I can’t see myself shedding a tear during Planes the way I did during the opening montage of Up, or the finale of the Toy Story trilogy — unless they’re tears of the “Why am I watching this?” kind. I welled up at various points in Finding Nemo, not because of the heart-wrenching tale, but because of the sheer beauty of some of the scenes: the coral reefs and jellyfish in particular. The sky lantern scene in Tangled got me in the same way, but it still lacked the emotional involvement and storyline of a Pixar movie, even with the involvement of John Lasseter. Back in 2007, after the Disney purchase, Lasseter himself convinced Disney to can direct-to-video sequels, but it seems now that baby needs new shoes again, as we’ve seen with all the (awful) Tinkerbell movies and even maybe the proper sequel to Cars itself, although I do still have hopes for that one.
Apparently Pixar has made a new short linking Cars 2 to Planes, but that seems to be their only official involvement — if you look closely at that logo above it says “Disney,” not “Disney-Pixar,” and I think that is a very telling sign of what to expect from this money-grabbing tie-in. Where will they go next? Jonathan reckons Trains, Anton then suggested they could go for a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Z says he’s, “…holding out for the inevitable DreamWorks knockoff: Helicopters.”
Why haven’t I embedded the trailer for you here, you ask? Well, maybe Disney has had a change of heart, as they’ve removed it from YouTube. But, this is the internet of course, so you can probably find it somewhere. At the time of this article’s publication, thefilmstage.com have it — see it quickly before they get a cease and desist!
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com
This could provide some pop for News Corp shares, which have declined more than 12% over the last five days as the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal mushroomed. The company says this morning that its board of ...
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachinebobby ferguson chile
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com
This could provide some pop for News Corp shares, which have declined more than 12% over the last five days as the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal mushroomed. The company says this morning that its board of ...
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachineAnyone else seeing an influx of blog headlines that go “Updated: [Thing That We Just Wrote About] Is A Hoax”?
While Internet hoaxes have been around since the Soviet Union wanted to join Usenet in 1984 (remember LonelyGirl15?), we’ve had quite a few doozies this week, from the woman who got a tattoo of 152 of her Facebook friends on her arm, to the eHarmony user tearing up over her love of cats, to the kidnapped lesbian Syrian blogger turning out to be a not kidnapped married guy in Scotland. Heh.
People have always been gullible, and gullible people having access to methods of dissemination like Facebook and Twitter only turns their folly up to eleven. But aren’t we as reporters paid to be filters of news, in essence paid to know better? Then why the rampant media coverage of every single one of these hoaxes?
The only answer I can come up with is that the demands of churnalism (or the recently dubbed “hamsterization” of journalism) and the quest for advertising traffic are only increasing for bloggers as more and more readers spend more and more time and money online. This begs the question: How many of us uncritically posting on incredulous rumors and unverified viral stories are cynically calculating how even more traffic will inevitably come from our correction posts (“Update: This Was A Hoax, Again”)?
Perhaps the more innocent among us are fooled by the fact that the Internet has also increased the amount of ridiculous but true news. Media frenzies like #Weinergate and Sarah Palin’s description of Paul Revere’s ride remind us that there is plenty of bona fide news that people wish was fake, making the tech media landscape pretty much a crapshoot for bloggers focused on speed.
Even we covered that Facebook Friends tattoo story as if it were serious news. And how I wished that that story were real, letting me transform it into some bloated pseudo-intellectual weekend think piece about the ephemerality of online friendships and the quest for permanence in a digital age. Instead you guys get this.
It was only after I discovered that the susyj87 YouTube user account only had uploaded one video prior to “My Social Tattoo” and any kind of identifying details about the poster were nowhere to be found did I drop it as a viable source for reblogging, moving on (quickly as always) to the next source of news. But man, like everybody else, I wanted to believe that some idiot got this breathtakingly dumb tattoo. I mean it could happen, right?
In 2011 a retweet can function as the online equivalent of gawking at a car crash, even when the story seems too good (or more likely, bad) to be true. Perhaps this is why the hashtag #SeriouslyMcDonalds was a trending topic this morning, after a sign mandating African American McDonald’s patrons pay a $1.50 surcharge went viral. Even McDonald’s Twitter account quickly declared this a “hoax”, but the #SeriouslyMcDonalds hashtag continues to appear in around 20 tweets a second.
Perhaps the most interesting hoax story to come out of an slow summer week otherwise filled with Apple news, was the tale of a David Voelkert, who was arrested after his ex-wife lured him into revealing his plans to murder her, by posing as a teen admirer on Facebook.
While the initial wave of stories were along the lines of “Man Arrested After Wife’s Facebook Teen Ruse SHOCKER ,” the updates to the story provided a very interested interesting twist, as it turns out that Voelkert suspected that his wife was behind the fake profile and went to a notary in order to prove himself innocent before sending the otherwise incriminating messages.
Voelkert did what we bloggers should be doing more of, taking what happens online with a grain of salt. Granted, he probably had way more time.
Image: Yfrog
New from the “Dear God, no” pile comes Planes, flying your way in 2013 from DisneyToon Studios, the same people that brought you The Lion King 1 1/2. What do you mean, you don’t remember that one? It was a classic, retelling the same story as The Lion King, just from a different point of view. Why bother trying to make a proper sequel to one of your most successful films, when you can cobble together another one from the dregs on the cutting room floor?
Unfortunately, it seems that our beloved Pixar movies are heading down the same route, now that they’ve been swallowed up by the Mouse. A trailer for Planes was released yesterday on YouTube and, although the animation looks to be on a par with Pixar’s, I seriously doubt that this direct-to-DVD/Blu-ray film will come anywhere near Pixar’s caliber. Even though the first Cars movie was essentially a retelling of Doc Hollywood, it still had enough originality and excitement to make it one of Pixar’s most popular films. Note I said “most popular,” not “best,” and that’s probably the whole point.
Disney is very good at making money, Pixar is very good at making excellent movies. I can’t see myself shedding a tear during Planes the way I did during the opening montage of Up, or the finale of the Toy Story trilogy — unless they’re tears of the “Why am I watching this?” kind. I welled up at various points in Finding Nemo, not because of the heart-wrenching tale, but because of the sheer beauty of some of the scenes: the coral reefs and jellyfish in particular. The sky lantern scene in Tangled got me in the same way, but it still lacked the emotional involvement and storyline of a Pixar movie, even with the involvement of John Lasseter. Back in 2007, after the Disney purchase, Lasseter himself convinced Disney to can direct-to-video sequels, but it seems now that baby needs new shoes again, as we’ve seen with all the (awful) Tinkerbell movies and even maybe the proper sequel to Cars itself, although I do still have hopes for that one.
Apparently Pixar has made a new short linking Cars 2 to Planes, but that seems to be their only official involvement — if you look closely at that logo above it says “Disney,” not “Disney-Pixar,” and I think that is a very telling sign of what to expect from this money-grabbing tie-in. Where will they go next? Jonathan reckons Trains, Anton then suggested they could go for a remake of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Z says he’s, “…holding out for the inevitable DreamWorks knockoff: Helicopters.”
Why haven’t I embedded the trailer for you here, you ask? Well, maybe Disney has had a change of heart, as they’ve removed it from YouTube. But, this is the internet of course, so you can probably find it somewhere. At the time of this article’s publication, thefilmstage.com have it — see it quickly before they get a cease and desist!
![salesman [a maysles brothers documentary] by the|G|™](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2764/5777544950_7fd164ac64.jpg)
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com
This could provide some pop for News Corp shares, which have declined more than 12% over the last five days as the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal mushroomed. The company says this morning that its board of ...
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachinebobby ferguson directory
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com
This could provide some pop for News Corp shares, which have declined more than 12% over the last five days as the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal mushroomed. The company says this morning that its board of ...
<b>News</b> Corp Launches $5B Stock Buyback – Deadline.com<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachine
So I wonder whether News Corp. will have to get out of the news business to save the business of News Corp. For it's not so bad to be rapacious when you're in the entertainment business. ...
Will <b>News</b> Corp. leave the <b>news</b> business? « BuzzMachinebuy bobby ferguson
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