Former Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was trolled by Vic Berger, who said he would get a Jeb Bush neck tattoo if he got to certain number of likes on a Vine video he posted on Twitter.
Bush’s campaign even got involved by actively promoting Berger, who then posted a video of his getting the tattoo, according to CNN.
All of it was fake.
While we can get all riled up about jokes on Twitter and Jeb Bush, I believe this is a fabulous example of the power of social media and how we still don’t fully understand or know how to use it yet.
Fact checking is surprisingly simple, yet social media supposedly guarantees we are talking to another person behind the keyboard, even when that is far from true. It seems like an innocent product that we can use to get information about what is going on in the world, but really we can never be sure of who or what we are really talking to.
Now that social media is so important for things like presidential campaigns, it seems more important than ever that we all re-remember how to fact-check or even how to pick up the phone.
According to Berger, he was only ever contacted online by the Bush campaign, and no one offered to call him or even visit him though he made the option available. Social experiment: 1. Bush campaign: 0.
While I find this hilarious and only wish Berger could continue his campaign trolling, I do have to suggest a little bit of caution when using the Internet or when dealing with media at all.
Remember when Discovery Channel ran its documentaries about mermaids and megalodon? They were two fake documentaries, one about finding mermaids and the other about finding a megalodon, a prehistoric shark. The documentaries were aired in good fun, but a great amount of people thought they were real, according to Business Insider. Like, a great amount. Yikes.
Not everything online or on TV is real, and while they are great platforms for information and aid, they also are great platforms for tricking people.
Bush’s campaign has since stopped communicating with Berger’s account, but I’m sure the lesson left its mark.
Really, we should be allowed to have fun online, and if a campaign is run so poorly as to believe someone would actually get a neck tattoo, then that speaks more to the incompetency of the campaign than the guy trolling them.
Exercise some caution, and think before you tweet.
ewenning@indiana.edu
@emmawenninger
