NEW CASTLE —
In the past few days the Internet and casual conversation have spawned a rumor — ’80s hair metal icon, singer, song writer, actor and sports team owner Jon Bon Jovi had befallen an untimely death at the age of 49.
As the rumor spread it hit the social networks and the story got twisted and barely resembled the original fake details of the celebrity's death. Bon Jovi himself Tweeted and posted to his Facebook page in an effort to debunk the tales of his own premature death.
The New Jersey native went as far as to post a picture of himself in front of a Christmas tree holding a sign that read, “Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey” and the date “December 19th” hand-written on a plain, white piece of paper. This post was soon followed by the decries of “fake” and “PhotoShopped” and posters insisted that he was really dead and the whole thing was a conspiracy and a cover-up.
The singer poked fun at the entire situation during a charity event on Monday evening where he pretended to take frantic phone calls from friends and family who called to see if he was alive.
Admittedly, this is a fun topic of conversation and it causes those who are of a similar age as I to reminisce about the days of Bon Jovi music. The band can serve as a time capsule of sorts for us aging rockers, but below the surface of the up-tempo party rock and ballads, rages a much more poignant reality.
In an age where news and misinformation can travel the globe at equally terrifying speeds, its no surprise that such an interesting tidbit of celebrity dish reached a fever pitch in the matter of hours. As much as this is a testament to the free flow of information we have in this country and abroad, it is also a glimpse of the psyche of the masses.
A flock of free thinkers who, rather than check facts or use simple deductive reasoning, willfully and wholeheartedly accepted the report as factual and passed it along to others as such. This hoax soon took on a life of its own and became a monster of sorts that could not even be extinguished by Jon Bon Jovi himself.
This escapade enforced the notion that the ugly head of stupidity can rear itself at any given moment and take on a dangerous life of its own. This scenario has played out many times before. There is the Nigerian bank scam that roped in loads of Internet noobs who believed the words of an unknown person, half a world away and were willing to send money to help them in exchange for a great financial windfall.
Who can forget the Melissa virus in 1999 or ILOVEYOU e-mail worm that crippled corporate infrastructures in 2002.
Today, there are equally annoying hoaxes, such as the “If this gets 100 shares, this boy will get his transplant for free.” This is simply nonsense and only serves to clog up Facebook's and other network resources. I ask you, how is sharing an uncaptioned photo, of an unknown patient in an undisclosed facility supposed to develop into free medical? Furthermore, the photo used in this particular hoax was “borrowed” from the Chernobyl Children's Project International website and was dated 2008.
In years gone by, knowing how to navigate the scams, hustlers and trouble of any sort was called street smarts. Today, it seems that simple common sense would be paramount. However, that internal trigger has seemed to have become dull and has fallen by the wayside. Perhaps it is due to laziness or maybe even trust in our media system. It may even be a evolutionary loss of our primal self-protection instincts.
Regardless of the genesis of this mindset, we have thrown open the door for every snake oil salesman with a slick delivery to walk right in to our lives. After all, there is a sucker born every minute.
As a person who was briefly entangled in a fake death incident of my own, I would like to quote Mark Twain by saying, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Or were they?
Josh Drespling
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About Josh Drespling: Josh is a graphic designer at The News. His blog will appear each Sunday.
Discussion
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