When The Internet Kills

by Tasha Burton

 Last week, I saw my share of the most gullible people on earth. No one stole money from them, they weren't cheated on and they weren't accused of anything, but one thing they did do, was believe a lie. Not just your ordinary lie either. Typically, you have "reports" as I like to call them sometimes, on Facebook or Twitter about how a person's man or relative lied to them about something. Thing is, there's a lot of investigating that goes down in order to prove that lie. Yet, in the case of celebrities being whacked off by the internet, people take it at face value.

 The recent story, was about the inevitable death of Bon Jovi. Apparently, he's been sick for some time and like wildfire, one solitary link spread all over my timeline and newsfeed about him croaking out at home. I saw many reactions like, "WOW" and "R.I.P. Bon Jovi," followed by statements of supposed "grief." Internet grief is different from real life grief. Internet grief lasts about 24-48 hours. Just thought I'd note that.

 I chose to do some investigating to determine the validity of this story. I clicked on the link and was taken to a Wordpress blog that had only ONE entry. That one entry was about Bon Jovi's death. It's as if this person who created the blog, created it for just this reason, to get a lot of clicks and views. I'm sure that went through the roof, as so many gullible people out there just couldn't believe it! Matter of fact, it appears that the same day they started the Wordpress blog is the same day they posted the story.

 Now, in typical fashion, I comment somewhere along the lines of "if I don't see it on CNN, it's not true." Even when Michael Jackson died, I didn't believe it, despite the internet going crazy, until I saw it on CNN and the national news networks. Now, the person who posted the link, decided to keep going along with this hoax. For some reason, they chose to continue to believe it, until they find out otherwise. From who? Remember when Tyler Perry was a trending topic on Twitter for buying American Airlines? This same person believed that too. The link they provided was from a tabloid site that likes to make up silly stories (think The Onion News Network). I don't think this person even bothered to look at the other articles on the site: stories about Kim K's butt exploding and a "Virgin Mary" who was auctioning herself up for marriage (in today's world, the latter story may actually be real lol). I tried to reiterate to this person over and over that if the story does not come from a reputable news source, consider it false until then.

 It wasn't until about 10 people or so commented, stating that this story was false, that this person finally realized they got, got. Which reminds me of just one other instance, of this same person's gullibleness (not a word, but for the sake of this story, it is). On Youtube, the cool thing to do now, is to put "(Official Video)" in the title. Well, this person posted an "official video" of Kanye & Jay-Z's "No Church In The Wild." This person was even moved to call the video and images, "deep." The video consisted of black people playing the role of slave masters and white people being the slaves. See the video for yourself here and then tell me if UrbanMusicVEVO is owned by VEVO. I'll wait. If you think that this video is official, please disconnect your internet service and read a book.

 Twitter and Facebook's ability to let us retweet and share with a click of a button has a lot of people out there looking…stupid. "Think before you tweet" is a true prophecy nowadays. There's a lot of things you can put out into the cyber space world, that you can't get back. Don't get caught up and certainly, read and research before you tweet. You never know, the internet may very well one day, kill you off too.

-Tasha Burton
Part-time writer, full-time biz owner

Twitter: @heytasha