If it’s on the internet it must be true, right?
Obviously in these weird times we’re living in, sometimes it can get hard to tell fact from fiction. (I mean, who expected to see Kid Rock drinking a Bud Light this week?)
But that means that you have to be especially careful about believing what you see online. And unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t.
You know the kind of people I’m talking about: Your crazy uncle back home who shares those posts that say if you don’t share Facebook will own all of your pictures, or really believes that Mark Zuckerberg is going to give $1 million to one random person who shares a post.
Or the people who believe that some random country music star really wants to date them and just needs them to send $500 in Target gift cards and then they’ll be able to be together forever.
It may sound ridiculous, but it happens.
Well recently a story about Garth Brooks started going viral online, stating that the superstar started crying on stage during a show in Oklahoma because the crowd wouldn’t stop booing.
Now obviously this one was meant to capitalize on the recent headlines that Garth made when he took a stand on the Bud Light controversy, announcing that the beer would indeed be sold in his upcoming Nashville bar, Friends In Low Places.
“Yes, we’re going to serve every brand of beer. We just are. It’s not our decision to make.
If you come into this house, love one another. If you’re an a**hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.”
Garth’s quote seeming to call those boycotting Bud Light “a**sholes” upset quite a few people, who were quick to call out the ’90s country star for criticizing his own potential customers.
So, is it plausible that enough people are upset about his recent statements that they would boo him at a show? Sure.
And is Garth breaking out into tears on stage also plausible? I mean, does a bear sh*t in the woods? Garth cries at the drop of a hat. Some fake Facebook account with no profile picture and three friends leaves a comment that Garth’s music saved their life and it’s cue the waterworks.
So yeah, this article is at least plausible.
But it’s totally fake.
The claim was made in an article posted by the Dunning-Kruger Times, which says that “Garth broke down on stage” during “a recent country festival in Mastitoqua, Oklahoma” when the crowd wouldn’t stop booing.
The article also says that Garth “left the stage and went directly to the nearest Target to grab some Bud Light.”
I mean, that should give away that it’s satire. Garth hasn’t set foot in a Target for himself in decades.
But there are a few other dead giveaways that the article is fake: First, the Dunning-Kruger Times is a satire site.
The website describes itself as “a subsidiary of the “America’s Last Line of Defense” network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery.” And it gets its name from the psychological concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a bias that people have where they think they know more about something than they really do.
And another dead giveaway that it’s fake news? There is no city named Mastitoqua in Oklahoma – so there’s definitely not a country festival there.
In fact, Garth hasn’t played ANYWHERE in Oklahoma since he weighed in on the Bud Light controversy. The only shows he’s played since he made the comments at a Billboard Country Music in Conversation event in Nashville during CMA Fest is at his Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas as part of his current residency.
Of course we can’t let these facts get in the way of a good story.
People will believe pretty much anything that’s online at this point, but this one is pretty easily debunked – despite the fact that it wasn’t posted as a real news story in the first place.
But if it’s on the internet it must be true.
