The JoongAng reports that Saturday, Korean Twitter Land was rife with talk of a band of Chinese cannibals—two of whom spoke Korean very well—going around axing people to death and eating them in Gyeonggi-do.
Ridiculous as it may sound, it was retweeted hundreds of times. Gyeonggi-do police said they’ve found no such case.
The JoongAng compared it to the 2005 urban legend about the woman with the red mask, the difference being that at least this one spread amongst adults.
On Sunday, Twitter Land was aglow with news that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had been assassinated in Beijing. This turned out to be merely a rumor the CIA declared groundless.
A professor at SNU told the JoongAng that due to the retweet function, Twitter can spread news much quicker than existing media, but people have a tendency to retweet rashly without thinking prudently. Some Twitterers tweeted Monday that it was a problem for people to retweet things without confirming their validity, and called for people to stop retweeting rumors right away.
Marmot’s Note: I’m probably stating the obvious, but this is the conservative media building its case against Twitter, Facebook and other social network services, which progressives are seen to have utilized much better than conservatives in mobilizing their followers and getting the word out. This is not to say the JoongAng, Chosun and friends don’t have a point—I think we can all agree that there’s a lot of BS floating around on the web. What you generally won’t read in said papers, though, is reflection on why it sometimes seems young people are more inclined to believe what they read on Twitter than what they read in the mainstream press.
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I’ve been telling people about this for years. No one would believe me until now.
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