In October of this year, the YouTube channel Yes Theory, known for their social challenges to push people out of their comfort zones, uploaded a video to the popular video-sharing site. The video ended up receiving attention from individuals and news agencies all across the globe, and currently has, a mere week after its publication date, received over 7 million views. In the video titled “We Fooled the Internet w/ fake Justin Bieber Burrito Photo”, the creators challenged themselves to create a viral sensation by taking a photograph of a Justin Bieber look-alike doing something bizarre, before attempting to spread the fake image via several social media platforms and news outlets. Yet, it wasn’t until the image of “Justin Bieber” eating a burrito sideways was posted to the website Reddit on October 24th, that the image started creating buzz. After the image began collecting thousands of “upvotes” on the the website, it didn’t take long before massive news agencies and similar outlets caught wind of the photograph. Soon enough, the photo was everywhere. Countless of articles were published questioning Justin Bieber’s burrito-eating habits and people from every corner of the world were sharing and discussing what they thought was the famous Canadian singer. The internet was fooled. It wasn’t until the pranksters uploaded their youtube video on the 28th of October that Yes Theory revealed their careful orchestration of the entire debacle and news outlets everywhere had to, tail between their legs, reveal to their audience that the image had indeed been staged.
People sharing information without validating their sources, or “fake news”, is something we have been doing for generations in forms of gossip etc, however, as the influence social media has on society grew, such information has been able to spread at a much higher velocity than before. Websites like Reddit make it easy for members of the public to upload their own content, simply from a device the size of their palm. While this does allow the internet to be saturated with news/information from all sorts of voices across the globe without any influence from major news corporations, it is also important to acknowledge the fact that a Reddit user does not have to conform to the same journalistic regulations as a traditional news outlet would (Though these regulations might not always be followed, even by the major media). As seen in Yes Theory’s video, with the convenience of social media also comes the ability to upload manipulated images that conform to one’s personal agenda. Seeing how much the mainstream media relies on social media sources nowadays, this can and has, as proven by the video in question, become an issue when attempting to report factual information.