Social Media Hoaxes
Most of us know the familiar story of the boy who cried wolf. He told people that he saw a wolf, that he needed help, but then when people came to his assistance, there was no wolf. No wolf anywhere in sight and nothing to be afraid of. The last time that the boy cried wolf, however, it was there. I'm sure he thought, "Wow, I showed them, I was right." Today, we have our own wolves in many forms, one of them being social media. The amount of times that we see something on social media and automatically assume that it is true is alarming. We do not even question its legitimacy. We forget to question it, even if it is from an unfamiliar or unaccredited source. We see this take many forms, one we experienced with the recent snow days. The Twitter account saying that school was cancelled on a day when it was actually in session wasn't seen by many, and most people that did see it did not take it for more than a joke, but the few that decided in their minds that it was true just believed what they wanted to believe. "Of course I wanted a snow day, but when I checked, the account had no followers and only one tweet, so obviously it wasn't true," said one sophomore student. Another larger scale social media "scare" was the "Louisville Purge." This was one of the more terrifying ones, stating that on one night, fights would break out and crime would follow, throwing the city into its own version of the popular movie, The Purge. Thankfully, this did not end up happening, but the fear of something like this was awakened by social media in a way that wouldn't have been possible just a few years ago. Sometimes social media can mislead us in smaller, more harmless ways. A couple of months ago, someone created an interesting tweet that mislead thousands. A man made a false Wikipedia page, took a screenshot of it, and posted it on Twitter. The Wikipedia page was claiming that Jada Pinkett Smith's middle initial was N and Will Smith’s was O. This was claiming that their names were Jada N. and Will O., the same as their children's first names. As interesting as this would be, it isn't true. We have become so used to the accessibility of our information, we don't even verify for ourselves if it is really true. This shows that all of these new ways of communication that we have have their downsides as well as their upsides. The truth is, Internet hoaxes come in many shapes and sizes, and it's our responsibility to be aware of the facts instead of just believing the first thing that we see.
