It’s not an exaggeration to say that a lot of information is spread through social media instead of traditional news outlets, but this extends further than many may realize. Social media posts that are intended to be ironic are being picked up by legitimate sources that fail to understand the joke.
A recent example of this phenomenon is the rumor about a potential new album by Kendrick Lamar, which fans have named “Fireman.” The story behind the meme starts with world-renowned artist, Drake, teasing an album called “Iceman.” The online masses took this and started posting insulting comments about the title of the album, making memes of it. The joke extended further when one individual created a concept of Kendrick Lamar making a fake album called “Fireman” with an exaggerated AI-generated cover, to contrast Drake’s title, in reference to their infamous discourse from prior years.
When the “Fireman” rumor received attention, multiple news outlets picked up the story to question whether the purely fan-fueled rumor was genuine or not. USA Today, Jubilee Cast, HotNewHipHop, and MSN are just a few examples of online newspapers that have talked about this clearly ironic topic in full seriousness. While the concept of Kendrick being so petty to create an album completely opposite to his rival’s is ridiculous, it could also seem believable to some audiences.
The joke ran for several weeks until other rappers were brought into this. Meme accounts gave various artists other fake album titles that follow the same theme as Iceman and Fireman, starting with a resource, and ending with “man.” One post on TikTok used a clip of the intro to “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and overlaid the elements from the show, with more ironic AI-generated album covers. The post had Drake’s real cover and Kendrick’s satirical one, it also included J. Cole and Kanye in the joke, giving them an Earthman and Airman album.
This extension of the joke went viral, to the point of other users creating album variants all across the internet. These crude variants on the original harmless joke lost any chance of believability for the Fireman album. Any article that even brought up the possibility of truth in the original rumor has followed up to debunk the claim. Even though the AI-generated inside joke was quickly debunked, it serves as a wakeup call to news outlets and citizens across the world to check genuine sources for information.
Calabasas freshman, Fares Kagen, says “I feel they should do more research, before they post something available for potentially, the whole world.”
A less recent example of gullibility through irony is President Trump’s reaction to satirical newspaper, The Onion. Political messaging is common in the fields of the newsletter, often taking jabs at real world issues through humorous writing. Like the Fireman rumor, The Onion is intentionally and clearly false to most people with a sense of humor. The Onion specializes in a nihilistic, left-wing point of view that shouldn’t seriously shock anyone, unless you’re Trump’s Lawyers.
On January 23rd, 2013, The Onion published an article making fun of Donald Trump, called, “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead in About 15 or 20 Years.” The paper takes the perspective of Trump, who assures the American public that soon he’ll be dead, and everything will be alright in the end when that happens.
This specific article made waves, getting all the way to then businessman, Donald J. Trump, and he did not appreciate the sarcasm.
A couple years later, Editor-in-Chief of The Onion, Cole Bolton sat down with Willie Geist of TODAY and NBC NEWS for an interview about politician’s reactions to their work.
“Trump may not get the joke, he may just straight up attack you,” said Geist, half joking, half fully serious.
Bolton responded, “Actually Trump has reached out in the past, threatening lawsuits…”. The two went back and forth discussing the topic until someone else in the room confirmed that the article that warranted the confrontation was indeed the 2013 paper, “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead In About 15 or 20 Years.”
The Editor-in-Chief laughed aloud while pulling up the email that Trump’s lawyers sent, showing the rest of the room the message sent by the apprentice.
Trump’s immature response was concerning for 2013, but even more so when it’s clear his incompetence has grown over time. Through his Twitter outrages, AI blasphemy, and the familiar suing of Wall Street, the president of the united states has proved himself to also fall for obvious traps, like the average American.
The current POTUS has been shown to believe false truths through irony. The effects of web-based memes should no longer be down played. If the most influential man in the country, who has thousands of people to check his sources, could fall for online discourse, anyone can. There are people who dedicate themselves to spreading lies online, and in the modern state of wide-spread misinformation in America, it is essential to always check sources.
