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Want to hear some truly awful stories?
Awful right?
Just not strickly true.
Since Black Panther premiered last week, some...
just legends
on Twitter started making some *** up about how they were attacked by black people in the theatre.
The tweets came with pictures of the alleged victims covered in blood and bruises and ***.
This person was not attacked at a Black Panther screening.
Sadly, they were attacked at a Swedish nightclub last month.
This person is the ex-wife of former White House staffer, Rob Porter.
This is from a Serbian anti-domestic violence video from 2013.
This is a stock photo on Flickr from 2009.
This is a man who was...
...caught selling bootlegs of Black Panther outside of a theatre
and was severely beaten by a mob of African- Americans dressed in Chinese made dashikis.
Wait...what?
So you’re saying this guy was beat up by a black mob
dressed like this
and that all these outfits were made in China?
This is an actor from The Walking Dead and he’s, probably fine.
There’s obviously an element of ridiculousness here, right?
And in such instances the internet tends to kind of correct itself.
Exhibit A.
And so on and so forth.
But what happens if and when the internet doesn’t quite self correct in time?
Anyone, anywhere can make up some *** about anything and suddenly some angry dude
... or lady
(but probably a dude)
is beating someone else up because of something they heard on the internet.
I’m not saying things were that cray in this case.
To be fair, it was handful of trolls on twitter
who’s voice we’ve now amplified by reporting on them.
Shhh.
Sometimes though all it takes is a handful of trolls on twitter to throw a spark on a highly flammable situation
and everyone’s on fire.
So here’s my question
Whose job is it to make sure that doesn’t happen?
Twitter?
The law?
You the astute social media consumer?
Established media organisations?
The trolls?
Discuss that one amongst yourselves.
And in the meantime reverse image search is your friend my dudes.