Reports of Lil' Wayne's death have been greatly exaggerated… and annoying. A fake web page created to look like BBC.com made its rounds Halloween weekend, sending his fans into a text messaging and googling frenzy. This is the second death rumor involving the rapper; during the Summer, a rumor that his child was killed in a car accident also circulated. These rumors travel like lightning, and they chip away at the trust many had in Internet journalism.
I'm in no way saying this is the internet generation's Pentagon papers; this is far from it. But every time some bored person goes nuts with CSS stylesheets , the belief that there are reputable and safe internet sites wavers in the hearts and minds of young and impressionable people. Minds that are obviously already mushy enough to buy a million copies of a seemingly drunk man yodel into a mic and call it music are the same minds that aren't going to examine urls in a moment of panic. The page was cloned from a reputable BBC article called "Letter-bombing caretaker jailed." The fake page even had active links to email the story and print it.
When I saw the link to the "news story" I didn't believe it for a moment. The url, http://kineticnorth.com/BBCNews/?NewsGUID=fcf016e0-c92b-445a-aab0-735fdcecf0a3, was not even hosted on the BBC site. The fact that the story also strangely popped up across the pond before being plastered all over CNN didn't seem too likely. Of course I'm not a 14-year-old-girl who sees the Internet as a homework machine and mystical portal that somehow makes Facebook happen. A more casual user might not look twice at the url of a site, they just see they were sent a link that said "OMG THEY SHOT WEEZY OMGZ" and, as far as they know, the man plastered on their locker is no more. Grief and panic ensues and they express it the only way they know how: texting everyone they know.
It's easy to spread a rumor, and anyone that survived high school knows that if enough people believe a lie, in a way it momentarily becomes the truth. When someone plays a "prank" using news websites, they are directly attacking the credibility of not only that organization they are taking a swipe at; they are attacking journalism on the internet as a whole. A virgining of an entity as the Internet is, there are many that tend to find information found in a newspaper or on TV is more believable.
It is a logical conclusion, after all. We have been reared with the traditional producer/consumer model of information. Something happens, a journalist writes the story and it's broadcast through the one-way street of television, radio and print. The Internet is a completely different monster. We have blog sites like the Huffington Post blurring the line between blog and news, and sites like Youtube where a CNN story might not get as many views as a teen performing an interesting trick in their living room. So when something with a familiar logo pops up, some automatically assume that they are seeing a trusted producer, even when they are actually just looking at the handy work of a crafty netizen like themselves, a person with no access to "privileged information" and really is just looking for some "lulz".
It could almost make one paranoid. Whom can you trust in a situation where the same medium that's expected to give you trusted information is overrun with content not concerned with journalistic integrity. This is further complicated in situations like a hoax. A hoax like the death of Lil' Wayne has only one objective: to deceive you. How can you check facts on the Internet when the very sites that are lifted above the others are tainted? It's enough to make one log off and pick up a newspaper…
R U BEING PWND?
Sure signs its a hoax:
-Check the url. If it came from BBC.com , but the url doesn't look like other BBC stories, it's most likely a hoax.
- Are the links working? Most pranksters don't take the time to link to current stories, since it's very time consuming. Click around the site to see if the links are dummies.
-Check the Who is information of the site. Research who is presenting and spreading the information.
-If a celeb is reported dead, check their publicist page (it's usually linked to the celebs homepage). Death announcements are usually officially made to alert the press.
- Google! Google any and all names the article mentions.
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