The Day Twitter Gave Birth to Bart Simpson
What do the Chicago Tribune, Netflix, and Rolling Stone have in common? They all used the event of Bart Simpson's birthday last week to promote themselves. Normally, I have no problem with Simpsons-related tweets, even for selfish reasons (I've posted almost 3,000 of them myself), but the thing is, Bart's birthday wasn't last week. All three of the above tweeted a Bart birthday post, and in doing so, they helped propagate a lie.
Maybe "lie" is too harsh a word, as it implies intent or even malice. The word "misinformation" is more apt. On Wednesday, the Twitter collective somewhat randomly decided that it was Bart Simpon's 32nd birthday. [...]
