I was reading a post at Mashable about the story about the 13 year-old who bought a hooker with his dad’s credit card. For those that don’t know, that was a fake story drummed up by an expert Internet marketer to gain backlinks for his client1. This technique is called “linkbait”. Unfortunately, it worked so well that other mainstream media outlets picked it up and ran with it. The story is completely made up, but who cared enough to check the facts? Shoot, if it’s money.co.uk the it must be real. Right? Ha!
As I was reading the article, the author brought up the Christopher Walken for President Campaign and that is what was notable to me. The post author mentions that he debunked the “myth” of Walken for President after CBS had picked it up. I thought that was hilarious and would love to see the post containing the debunking, really. I want to know when CBS ran with this story. And, alas, I’m too damned lazy to look it up. So, how have I contributed to fake news?
Back in the day, when I was writing a blog called “Gray Does Matter”2, George Clooney supposedly wrote a piece for Huffington Post3. The post Clooney “wrote” had his name and byline attached, so it was assumed he was really saying what they said he was saying. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. What happened was that the editors at Huffington Post gathered together a bunch of Clooney quotes from other sources and pieced them together to make them look like a real blog post. Then they attached his name and picture to it. When Clooney got pissed and demanded that it be taken down and an apology be issued Arianna said:
I now realize that I made a big mistake in posting a blog without clearly identifying that the material in it didn’t originate as a blog post but was pieced together from previous interviews.
[...]I’m sorry I didn’t see this earlier. But I see it now and here is what I’m going to do about it:
1. Going forward, any time the HuffPost uses repurposed material we will identify it as such and source where it originally appeared and link to it. (Thank you Jeff Jarvis)
Ha!
At any rate, some of my old blog buds and I had a marvelous idea. We were going to campaign for Christopher Walken in 2008. Of course, we knew that the Walken campaign was bullshit. Afterall, we don’t work for the MSM and therefore have a few more brain cells4. And we were irritated with HuffPost for the bullshit they pulled. Ok, more than just “irritated” in my case, but I digress.
We each compiled quotes from famous people, “repurposed” them to our benefit and posted them as guest posts by the various famous folk. Mine was a post “by” Sandra Bullock. It was really fun at the time, but we had no idea our shenanigans would cause so much havoc.
I now realize that I have contributed in an unprecedented way to the epidemic of fake news and encouraging the “low-info” people to believe the hype. I am duly ashamed and wish to apologize to anyone who took my post as real. I understand that I’ve caused hurt to my party by endorsing a non-candidate and have probably hurt Sandra Bullock at the box office. My bad.
I would also like to take this time to curse the genitals of all Internet marketers who would do anything to get links. I humbly ask the Goddess to set their penises (or va-jay-jays as the case may be) a flame with a multitude host of crawling critters and festering, pus-filled boils. I ask that those that would pull this shit be forever barren in their loins and that their penises (or va-jay-jays as the case may be) be forever flaccid and without benefit of visitors other than those that must be inflated and/or worn on their own hands. I call upon the Goddess of URIs to infect those that would do anything to get hits and inflame their urinary tracks with a horrible, burning and/or stinging sensation. I ask, also, that medium-sized kidney stones be passed by them on a semi-regular basis.
A-men.
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Sphere: Related Content- That irritates the shit out me. [↩]
- Which was completely political in nature. [↩]
- This post was originally written at my old blog, but I moved it here [↩]
- I’m assuming. [↩]
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9 Comments
I’d still vote for Chris.
Oh, and I hope you don’t mind if I borrow your prayer to the Goddess for certain cretins in my outside-the-internet world. It is so perfect.
What, Chris isn’t running??? Damn.
The crime is not that you contributed to fake news, but that “real” reporters cannot be bothered to do anything as simple and ethical as checking facts before reporting a story. Is it your fault journalists are becoming lazy and sensationalist?
As for the linkbaiters, you said it best.
Heya, thanks for reading.
Unfortunately, I can’t point you to the original article any longer, as my admin who was hosting my site for the last 5 years “accidentally” deleted my directory. A little frustrating to lose 10 years of posts. Anyway.
I caught the meme when it was a rising star on the Technorati buzztracker about three or four years ago-ish (memory fails, I’m not sure exactly when this was), and rang up Walken’s PR agent (Maura Buxbaum) and asked for comment. She was as puzzled as anyone else, and responded first with “I don’t think so, I’ll ask him,” and then later with an “No, I talked to him, he’s not.” She then started pitching to me a movie he was working on with Robin Williams - the one about a comedian getting elected president.
I’ll see if I can find the dates on all this, but I definitely remember the day I got all that traffic.
Kelly,
If you go to his campaign page, you’ll likely appreciate his stance on the issues. I’m up in the air between him and Mickey Mouse at this point.
And feel free to steal the hex. I hope it works for ya.
Miz UV,
Sadly, we’ve been bamboozled again. Sucks, huh?
Vince,
Well, yes, it is my fault. Don’t you know? Mwahaha! *ahem* I should have held them to higher standards and demanded that they adhere to them. Instead, I egged them on with my sick sense of political humor. Now, I fear, the Democratic party is forever damaged and my children may never be able to tell truth from fiction. It’s all my fault!
Mark,
Thanks for stopping by! I really appreciate that.
I think the Walken campaign kicked off right after the 2004 election, if I’m not mistaken. I forget where I saw it first. We only joined in after the Clooney incident, so I have nothing myself prior to my untoward involvement. I would have loved to put a link pointing out CBS’s idiocy, though. Of course, if I could do anything to help Sen. Clinton go home then…
Can I just say that it took me a minute to equate 1998 to the “ten years” part of your comment? Holy moley, I’ve been online almost as long as you. Does that ever make you feel as old as it makes me feel? I feel like a granny now.
Anyway, for anyone that’s interested, I found a screenshot of my old blog on the Way Back Machine. Those were the days….
Go Back in Time!!!
lol … holy shitballs. I would comment but I’m off to see the doctor about this strange stinging sensation some place that I can’t mention …
I think it’s the duty of every reader on earth to verify facts, regardless of the source. Sometimes, even the most reliable of newspapers get duped. I like to think of your “error” as an “experiment”. Doesn’t that have a better ring to it?
Suzanne,
You wouldn’t do something like that, would you? Aw, c’mon.
Miss Write,
It’s hard to verify facts when every “reputable” news source you find is telling the same tall tales. Especially for the little guy who doesn’t really no any better. How would I, for instance, be able to know that the kid was made up in the above story?
As for the rest, well, my biggest beef was with the Huffpo piece “written by” George Clooney, when in fact it wasn’t. I remember being downright furious that Arianna Huffington not only did that, but then said she would make it clear from then on that certain posts weren’t really written by the people in the bylines. Not that she wouldn’t do that again, mind you. But that she’d make sure that their bullshit was disclosed.
I then joined a small group of other bloggers that posted “guest” posts from various famous people. It was an exercise in parody and I found it giggle-worthy. My “guest post” by Sandra Bullock was a complete compilation of quotes I found from various articles and lines she’d had in movies. I then posted a small footnote at the end to let passersby know that Ms. Bullock had zilch to do with the actual posting of that material. Ah, those were the days.
At any rate, there was a good reason for the tag “Teh Funny!“, because, well, most of this post was written with tongue firmly in cheek.