Epic gullible fail

Last week Jimmy Kimmel revealed the “Worst twerk fail ever — girl catches fire!” YouTube video — with almost 13 million views — was a fake.

In the video, a young girl is booty bouncing in front of her couch and flirting with the camera.

The candles are lit on a nearby coffee table  and the girl turns the music up, continuing to dance around the room.

She puts her hands on the ground, her feet on the door, and begins twerking. It’s like a scene out of any undergrad’s living room.

Then the door opens.

The girl falls ass-down and shatters the glass coffee table, lighting her yoga pants on fire. Her roommate stands screaming behind her. The clip ends.  

The 5-minute video of Kimmel revealing the details behind the prank received over 15 million views. The full 55-second clip, which Kimmel uploaded after he owned up to creating the video, has more than one million views.

Countless news sources reported with concern over the girl’s epic fail, but not a single one interviewed the girl.

If they had, they would have learned that she is a professional stunt woman.

In an age when more than one billion people connect on Facebook daily, users create relationships with their technology.

A lot of good can come from using our relationships to build trust and credibility, but it’s easy to fall into a trap of assuming everything we read or see is true.  

According to YouTube’s statistics, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to its site every minute. With the ability to connect instantly, we can create what might seem like friendships with online figures.

It is highly improbable that all 144,000 hours of content uploaded per day are 100 percent true.

As media consumers, it is our responsibility to consume online media critically.

We should seek second sources and look for the loophole, asking the tough questions and pausing to think before responding.

Misleading messages aren’t shared only across the internet.

A company in Florida recently sent more than 42 million misleading and unwarranted text messages.

The company collected more than $377,321 by asking for users’ private information, all of which the Federal Trade Commission is demanding they repay.

Annoying pop-up windows online are bad enough, but it’s become relatively easy to spot the lack of validity.

Call us crazy, but if a random number says we’ve won a prize, the last thing we’re doing is entering our social security number to claim it.

We shouldn’t assume everything we read or see is true.

It goes both ways. Websites should remain transparent and credit their sources.

It should be clearly stated what type of news gathering tools were used.

The case of the epic twerk fail on YouTube has small consequences, but it’s a good reminder anyone can put anything online.

­— opinion@idsnews.com
Follow the Opinion Desk on Twitter @ids_opinion.