Yesterday there were rumors flying around the Internet about the death of Chris Henry many hours before he was officially pronounced dead. Last night, Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry had life-threatening injuries after falling out the back of a truck. Although it was reported that he was still alive but in very grave condition, he was not dead at that time.
The number one Google trend for hours was, "Chris Henry is Dead." Some sites, including several that don't even write the news -- they just use trending words to drive traffic to their sites that are full of ads -- had misleading titles pronouncing the 26 year old NFL football player dead with no regard for the truth.
Social media is one phenomenal place to help others, learn more about what's going on in the world and connect with those you might not otherwise meet. However, let me say this about that:
WHAT are PEOPLE THINKING?
Being social is not about spreading rumors. Social media wasn't created to scam people, spam people or report people dead before they've reached the pearly gates. People are so hell bent on being the first to report a tragedy that they use words that are going to get them the most page views or attention instead of using common sense.
I write trending topics, yes I do. However, I have the courtesy to step back and separate the truth from the rumor. Not always easy to do, but a little research prior to slapping a story up or Tweeting out death is known as common sense.
DEAD?
That's a heavy duty word. It causes panic. Sadness. Stress. It's not like we don't have enough of THAT to go around with the economy taking a roller coaster ride. But seriously...who starts these rumors or is it just that desire to do business with that three letter word:
SEO
SEO is otherwise known as "Search Engine Optimization" in the social media world, it pushes your info out in front so others can see it ... or something like that. I don't "Do" SEO for the pure reason that it sometimes gets the wrong information in front of the wrong people.
CHRIS HENRY
I don't know Chris Henry. The truth? I love baseball so football is a bit of a mystery to me. However, as a writer and someone who uses social media quite a bit, I read about everything so I can learn and be aware of who does what in the world. Even if it's football.
I imagine that Chris Henry has a family. His fiancee, Loleini Tonga, now has to deal with the fact that a domestic argument was the last connection she had with Chris, and it wasn't a good way to part. Henry was on the injured reserve list with the Bengals since November and apparently was starting to clean up his act after some altercations in the past. He was just 26 year old.
IRRESPONSIBLE SOCIAL MEDIA
It doesn't matter if he was a superstar, football legend, rookie ball player, musician or garbage man: Chris Henry was pronounced dead before his time. Social media didn't give him a chance. They just blew him off as a dead man, even if that seemed inevitable, all because someone wanted to be first.
Will someone please be first with the good news and make it true? I've never seen so much social media bullcrap as I have in the past month or two -- and this isn't the first time the "dead" rumors have flown around that were totally unfounded.
Dead is final. No one wants to log onto Twitter and read that their best friend is dead -- and then find out she's not. No one wants to check out the latest Google trending topics and find out that Miley Cyrus is dead ... and then find out that it was the bus driver of her tour bus, yet someone wanted to get some major "traffic" on their site, so they decided to hype up a little death notice.
It doesn't matter if you're a fan or have no idea who someone is. People need to start practicing social responsibility in all forms of social media.
Rest in peace, Chris Henry.
Comments
For some people the attitude is a callous disregard for anything but themselves. Some people who could not care less if a million people die so long as they make a $100 on some ebook they got for free.
That was a really nice article.
Well put! I hope others appreciate your words. i am tired of reading intentional lies.
Blah. Boring and wrong on every level. Ridiculously shallow! Please somebody who declares themselves to be the orators of our day, please, please, say something that matters. Words do matter.
I wholeheartedly agree with you.. some of us have had elements of gossip at challenging points of time.. i have experienced these ramifications myself.. all I can say is 'truth WILL prevail', and the gossip-mongers, malicious or just immature, reveal themselves for all the world to see. We just need to set our own standards of who and what we believe, and make sure we remember who we can actually trust.
Please don't comment on topics that you lack knowledge in. SEO is not the same thing as social media, nor is SEO part of social media. They are both part of online marketing, but SEO deals with optimizing a website so that it is more likely rank in a search engine for a given search query, while social media marketing includes blogs, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Your reference to Google Trends and equating it to social media betrays your ignorance of the subject matter. Google Trends measures search volume for a given query - that's it! It doesn't measure social media nor is it social media.
If you are trying to say that social media led to the queries which caused a trend spike in Google, then I would point out that you need to revise your text because it doesn't, but beyond that I would caution against making any causal confusions or any other number of logical reasoning errors.
Hi, I'm the Panama City Motorcycle Examiner. I have subscribed to your columns. You wouldnt think it would be necessary to tell people to think before you spread rumors...
I guess we can't all be grownups though...keep up the good work!
David
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