Salty Canadian journalists felt the need to fact-check this tweet. Here's an article from Emma McIntosh:Toronto bar reacts to Kevin Durant’s injury pic.twitter.com/4oWqlcuv3S— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) June 11, 2019
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/12/news/we-fact-checked-fake-video-raptors-fans-cheering-injury
To be fair, Emma McIntosh wasn't the saltiest. There were plenty of other salty Canadian journalists.
Fake as shit, and Barstool, whether joking or not, remains trash https://t.co/4bgsCOVL9x https://t.co/kRjHomkBd9— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) June 11, 2019
.@barstoolsports spreading fake video of Raptors fans cheering Durant injury #Raptors #RaptorsvsWarriors https://t.co/DDyJiSjM3O— Andrew Russell (@andrewglobal) June 11, 2019
And that video was tweeted by a legitimate news organization 🙄 https://t.co/bVHU1m6e9D— Jane Lytvynenko 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️ (@JaneLytv) June 12, 2019
I realize that doctored videos are a concern in our modern-day media ecosystem. But...this wasn't a doctored video. It wasn't a "fake" video. It was a joke video. It was a meme video. There's a fine line, I get it.A video has gone viral purportedly showing a Toronto bar erupting when Kevin Durant got hurt. The video is fake. But here's the conundrum. Sharing it to explain its fake, only circulates it more. Feels like using controlled burns to fight forest fires. Its right but feels wrong.— Tom Harrington (@cbctom) June 11, 2019
Barstool was clearly on the right side of that fine line. Instead of "fact-checking" Barstool Sports and labeling them as fake news, what we should be doing is mocking anyone who was too dumb to get the joke.