Fake News?!
Over Spring Break, I posted an Instagram story welcoming my new cat, George, to my family. The picture that I posted is below.
However, there was just one problem: the post was fake.
George is a real cat. Except, her name is KeKe and she belongs to my cousins. And the picture was taken over a year ago.
I posted the image to see if I would get any reactions. I wanted to know if people thought the post was real, or if they would call me out. I lot of people that know me well are aware that, while I’d really like a pet, it wouldn’t really work for my family. With me being away at school, and my parents always out of the house with work, it wouldn’t be fair to our pet.
And while I don’t normally get a lot of comments on my posts, I was interested to see if the people closest to me would leave a comment anyways. And a few did.
Within the twenty-four hours that my Instagram story was up, I got 5 comments. Two of the comments were about how my roommate (a known cat lover) was rubbing off on me. My roommate was also very excited, commenting how cute she thought the cat was. Another old acquaintance also commented on how cute the cat was. And lastly, my cousin commented and texted me excitedly to confirm the fact that I did get a cat.
Everyone who commented believed in the authenticity of my post. They were all excited for me, and, with the exception of my cousin, did not feel the need to question me about whether or not I was actually telling the truth.
I think the main reason that this happened was because my followers (who are mainly close friends and family members) are people that trust me and know that I don’t post that often, so when I do post they don’t have reason to think I would be joking about something.
I think my lack of posting often also contributes to the fact that many people didn’t comment on my story. I think my close friends from home didn’t believe it because if I truly did get a cat, I probably would have already told them or would have posted something on Snapchat first. I usually only post more formal photos on my Instagram, whereas my Snapchat has more in-the-moment, informal photos.
In this way, I realized that the type of social media site that you post on helps to determine whether or not people would believe you or not.
I have 395 followers on Instagram, and just over 100 people viewed my story. Many people who viewed it are people that I don’t talk to that often or don’t know that well, so it makes sense that the majority of my followers wouldn’t comment on my post.
Yet, no one called me out on my fake post, which either means they thought it was real, but didn’t know me well enough to comment on it, or that they thought it was fake but didn’t want to question me.
I attribute this to how we initially present ourselves online. If we present ourselves as trustworthy and dependable, which I like to think my online presence is, then people will not question us.
In this way, audience is important in determining how people will react to a post. My Instagram followers are a mix of people I am close to, and people that I know but am not close to. Both groups of people were not willing to comment or call me out. However, if I posted on Facebook, where a lot of older family members are friends with me, I suspect that they would question me or comment on my post, because for many of them Facebook is the only way we communicate.
Elsewhere, if I posted to Twitter, I might have gotten more comments from strangers, because the detachment of not knowing people from anywhere but their online presence might encourage people to reach out to me, rather than if they know me from real life. This is because there is less stress on maintaining the relationships with people I don’t know online, because if we mess up on the relationship, there will be no real loss. Therefore, strangers are more likely to comment on a post, because they have less to lose.
However, I posted on Instagram, where I hardly get any comments, because I do not post often. This is the presence I keep on Instagram. My close friends believed I would have told them in person or over text message or Snapchat if I truly got a cat, and those who didn’t know me well enough didn’t care enough to comment. Those that did end up commenting were close friends who trusted me enough and did not believe that I would post something untrue on my Instagram.
