Misinformation about Justin Timberlake’s arrest from a Pop Crave parody account spreads like wildfire online
In this modern age of misinformation, one has to be extra vigilant when sponging up content on our dear internet, particularly when a news source has the word “poo” in the title.
This week, you may have noticed that Justin Timberlake did something very dumb and got caught doing that very dumb thing. (If you did not, the NSYNCer was arrested for driving intoxicated.)
While the internet had a field day with this news and particularly Justin’s very specific headshot, parody celebrity news account "Poo Crave" took things a step further.
“Justin Timberlake allegedly had traces of molly, poppers, Truvada, and coke in his bloodstream following his DWI arrest in New York,” the tweet—which was live for almost 24 hour—read before its deletion.
None of it was true, but here’s the thing about Poo Crave: their logo looks an awful lot like actual pop culture news source Pop Crave. If you were scrolling at a typical scroll speed through you feed, chances are you wouldn’t notice that extra “o,” and several people certainly didn’t.
The tweet gained 7.2 million views and was reposted and quoted a combined 13K times. Many eyes got on this thing, which means a lot of folks took it as gospel, which…is not great.
It’s not the first time recently that Poo Crave has caused some online chaos with their li’l stinkery, but it’s certainly the most high profile.
As the tweet spread, it was not only taken down, but Poo Crave’s account itself had been disabled.
Either way, the damage had already been done. The issue has caused many to lament the state of current media literacy, which yeah, we’re not at our peak in that department currently:
Perhaps this will all teach us a valuable lesson about intelligent reading comprehension, but it feels like we've maybe already told that "bye bye bye." (It ain't no lie.)
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