For much of yesterday, a meme of a girl quitting her job via dry erase board went viral through comedy-content site, The Chive. Over 30K tweets, 400K unique visits to the site, and a similarly ridiculous amount of Facebook shares later, the entire incident has been outed as a hoax. The Chive folks have been responsible for other hoaxes, like the girl who accidentally texted her dad when she lost her virginity. Now here's a tongue-in-cheek take on the photos that offers you advice on how to make a meme.
The Chive writers talked about how it wanted to have some fun and exploit people's lack of due diligence. This very minor incident shows how quickly misinformation spreads. Given the crazy speed that news is now shared, everyone wants to the first one to spread the word, without first taking their time to fact-check.
Along the same lines, there have been other accounts that say that the JetBlue flight attendant is the one who started the skirmish that led to his eventual outburst.
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Both great examples of using many of tools we've looked at -- one intentionally and one just by the nature of the story.
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