David Christopher Bell
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If you look hard enough, the Internet will provide evidence for anything you want. Anything. Obama is guarded by lizard-men? Here you go. The Titanic was an inside job? Oh, for sure, man. The job of the media should be to take all that news-feed and forum swill and show us the true light ... or, as our zillion-part series continues to prove, just go with whatever headlines they think will get the most rage and/or boner clicks.
Here are a few recent examples that might have fooled your friends (but not you, because you've read, like, 20 of these by now and know better):
North Korea has risen in the ranks of egregious lunacy so much that visiting it was Dennis Rodman's rock bottom moment -- which is saying a whole lot. Thanks to this, the country has also become the Swiss Army Knife of irresponsible journalism, with pretty much any and all stories coming out of it appearing believable. Like this one:
mirror.co.uk
Presumably, Rodman was team captain.
According to the rock-hard evidence (one random video on YouTube), the North Korean media tried to convince people that their team had made it to the World Cup final, despite never qualifying in the first place -- which would be an odd thing to do, considering that North Koreans can totally watch the World Cup on TV and refute that in a heartbeat. The story was spread by our old friend Metro, which has since changed the headline to reflect its bullshit status ... but not before it was mindlessly copied by the The Mirror and others. More respectable sites like CBC and Yahoo seemed slightly skeptical, but still reported on the fucking thing and gave us the headlines above.
The worst part? The lips of the news anchor in the video didn't even match up with the sound, making this the laziest attempt at doctoring the news since the announcement that North Korea claimed to land on the sun, which boiled down to a still of a guy in a suit and a rocket.
via mic.com
Silly, gullible North Korean media.
Here are the three words every news-reading parent fears the most: New. Teen. Trend. Yes, it's that time again. Herd up your children, lock your doors, and call for a family meeting immediately; it looks like the trend reckoning to end all reckonings is upon us, and it's called "vamping" ... otherwise known as teenagers staying up too late. Wait, what?
medicaldaily.com
From the creators of "Killfucking" (not flossing regularly).
Holy tits. Have the N.Y. Times, Yahoo, New York Magazine, and Medical Daily officially become parodies of their own sites? The N.Y. Times even points out that some of these kids are reading under the covers of their beds, because it's not like that is something that's been going on since the invention of electric light.
But let's stand back and take a labored breath ... maybe the "trend" being identified here is that they are calling it "vamping" and not "just being a teenager"? In that case, it is at least a slightly new trend, right? Actually, no, that's not it either -- as we've gone ahead and looked up the #vamping hashtag (that the news claims is all the rage) in two different tracking sites and came up this:
hashtracking.com
More like #Pac-Manning.
That shows right after the story "broke," with only 1,214 tweets mentioning the phrase. Can anyone guess when the popularity of #vamping rose significantly?
via keyhole.co
Shortly before #bullshit also saw a spike.
Oh, look, right around July 9, two days after the N.Y. Times farted out the first story about the trend. Wow, journalists reporting on a made-up teen craze and causing it to become real? When has that ever happened before?
Attention, everyone: A hot party is about to move into your pants. A hot, painful, traumatic party called "global warming-caused kidney stones."
cbsnews.com
"Which one? Read on to find ou- NO, MY DONG!"
Oh, fuck that. As if climate change wasn't scary enough, Science Daily, CBS, and Yahoo are reporting that as the temperature increases so will our anguished wails of crotch suffering. So how was this determined? A study released by Environmental Health Perspectives found that hot days tend to be followed by an increase in kidney stone-related doctor visits -- the loose conclusion being that the hotter the planet gets, the more dick rocks we'll be blessed with. Therefore, climate change and kidney stones must be connected ... even though the articles themselves later mention these little bastards are only "caused" by heat because we tend to dehydrate ourselves by not drinking enough water.
Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images
*30-second article break for water-drinking*
By this logic, you could also say climate change kills more pets because we're too stupid not to leave them in hot cars all day.
So, sure, if you really want to say that global warming creates more kidney stones, then go ahead -- but then you also have to admit it creates more pool parties and hammock-sex accidents. It's almost a shame, because "climate change will make your penis hurt" might be the only way to convince all those rich industrialists that it's a serious prob- never mind, everyone, we got this one wrong! Heat-induced kidney stones are totally real!
Really? Two of these in one week? Is the real story here "Climate Change Makes People Dumber"? (For the record, that's a joke. Don't reprint that, Daily Mail.)
Anyway, this particular story combines our nebulous understanding of weather with the age-old myths surrounding redheads, like that they lack a soul, have a tendency to attract bees, and were created by Ron Howard so that he can feel less alone on our alien world. All these things might come to a screeching halt in a century or so:
metro.co.uk
Not one "Gingerpocalypse"? What happened to JOURNALISM?
Apparently, if they remake Harry Potter in the future, the Ron Weasley actor will have to wear a wig. The study that The Independent, Huffington Post, Daily Record, and, what do you know, Metro and The Mirror (missed you guys) are going on about comes from a Dr. Alistair Moffat, who claims that as the planet warms redheads will be genetically wiped from the population. The only catch being that Moffat doesn't have a medical degree, Ph.D., or any background in genetics whatsoever. Oh, also, he's gotten in trouble in the past for claiming he discovered the descendants of Eve and the Queen of Sheba.
Celeste Sloman
But he looks so trustworthy!
But hey -- he has a "Dr." before his name, which was apparently reason enough to report his nonsense even though every single part of his theory has been debunked by people who know way more than he does. On the bright side, if science isn't working out for this guy he can always excel in journalism.
