Fake news: Children’s Toy “My First Vape”
At the end of August, 2017 the website Psuedo.News.co.uk reported a new childrens toy that was portraying an Electronic Cigarette titled “My first vape”. The advertisement of this tragic new toy came off very realistic and repugnant to viewers. There are many view points on the advertisement, some may find it very sarcastic and funny, while others & myself found it disturbing. The imagery on the toy is a infant holding a so called child E-Cig, and E-Cig liquid beside the child with the label “9+ Months”. After further research and reading the article on Snopes.com, the advertisement was just a hoax and was created by a man by the name of Adam Padilla as a humorous image.
Research Reults
After reading the Snopes article on the viral childrens E-cig toy it was easy to find the toy and advertisement to be a complete hoax. The first link to pop up on google takes you straight to the Twitter link where it all began and was first announced. A twitter user by the name of Adam Padilla shared the advertisement on August 25th, 2017. After the tweet went viral Snopes further interviewed Padilla and he stated, “I thought it would be a funny and crazy notion for a baby toy.” Padilla is a serial meme creator and creates imagery like this only for sarcastic humor and entertainment. Many viewers started the discussion of it meaning there will be future E-Cigs for children and it being created for further campaigns. Padilla cleared that up by stating “The meme was not in the least promotional for me, other than I guess going viral helping my personal brand to some degree.” to Snopes.
The simple and what Padilla viewed as harmless meme took over the web and made it on national telivision. The toy made an appearance on ABC News, Fact or Fiction and was announced as Fiction. ABC News is a well known accrediated company that had enough proof to announce the toy to be fake. Anyone person with enough common sense would know there are laws that would prevent something like this being created as well.
Another UK fake news website by the name of totallywicked-eliquid.co discussed the viral fake toy. It was a huge debate what the meme actually meant. Was it a simple meme? or an anti-vaping propaganda? If you go back to Snopes, you would recgonize Padilla making it very clear it was supposed to be harmless and nothing to do with campaigns or anti-vaping AT ALL.
Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are all used world wide for a fun and interactive enviorment. Memes have become a popular way of expressing sarcastic humor in the past few years and it seems they have been taken a little too far. Something like this is a great example as to why the internet and freedom shouldn’t be abused. Something so harmless and little turned into world-wide chaos because the meaning was not clear behind the imagery. Fake news is easily and sometimes unintentionally created, just as this one was.