That time I botched a viral tweet by forgetting to check the source

Last month I tried to hop on a trending story about a guy who supposedly built a cabin from scratch in 3 days. I shared it in a group I'm in, hyping it up as this amazing feat. Turned out the whole thing was staged, the cabin was pre-built and just assembled for the video. Someone called me out in the comments with a link to the debunk. Felt like an idiot, had to delete the post and apologize. Now I always screen record the original clip and check if it seems too perfect before I share anything. Has anyone else gotten burned by jumping on a viral story without fact checking first?

3 comments

3 Comments

paige861mo ago

Used to be the type who just hit share the second something looked cool. Never really thought about checking anything because why would someone fake something like that, right? Then my brother sent me a video of a guy "rescuing" a deer from a frozen lake and I almost shared it before realizing it was from a movie set. That cabin story would have gotten me too if i saw it first, hard to believe something that specific could be staged.

samjohnson1mo ago

Did you at least get a good laugh out of it before you caught yourself? I once shared a picture of what I thought was a bear riding a bicycle, turned out to be a Photoshop contest winner from three years ago. Felt pretty silly after that, but at least my friends knew where to find me for a good joke.

phoenix_thompson415d ago

oh man that bear on a bike thing would have gotten me too honestly. i once fell for one of those "this dog was left at the shelter for being too happy" stories and i was SO mad about it for like an hour before someone pointed out it was a parody site. felt like such a dope. but yeah looking back i was laughing at myself for days after that, the dog thing was just too perfect you know? my friends still bring it up sometimes when i get all ranty about something online. at least we can laugh at ourselves i guess.