“What do you think of this?” she passed me her phone. The text message showed a smart link to an Internet article with the picture of an official making an announcement.
“I don’t know,” I said, “Did you read it?”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice anxious.
“What did it say?”
“I only read the message. Should I be worried? Should I get flood insurance? Should we be leaving?” That’s when I realized that she read the message headline, but not the article that it linked to.
“Oh,” I said, and then clicked on the article link: “Bonita Springs River Rising Officials Say.” The phone switched to the internet browser, paused for a minute to load the page, and then the article popped up.
We had just been down to the river that afternoon and spoke to the locals after the recent hurricane. A women had loaded her husbands ashes and her two kids into a truck to escape the rising river, but that was 3 nights ago. Now she was cleaning up the yard. The river had not made it to my friend’s house during the hurricane, but would it make it now? Tonight, the highway was closed 30 miles north of us due to the Myakka river flooding, but that’s a different river. “What could be happening?” I thought to myself.
I scanned the article which was only two very short paragraphs and more unrelated Internet article links and ads. No officials were named. No organizations mentioned. No links to other sites. There seemed to be no information. At the bottom was a graph that made no sense. I enlarged it; the title of the graph said, “Myakka River Levels.” The graph had nothing to do with the river mentioned in the article.
That’s when it hit me. This is fake news.
“I’m going to call and get flood insurance,” said my friend.
“They won’t give you insurance during a storm,” I said.
“I’m going to call the insurance company. I’ll feel better.”
I explained that there was no credible information in the article. I showed her the graph about a different river. Eventually, she calmed down.
That’s when I realized that I was the one that clicked on the bait and read the article. I was the one that brought up the internet ads that someone else will get paid for showing me. Clickbait! I was suddenly angry at myself. I had fallen for the fake news clickbait.
We went back to watching the television for a few minutes. Then, my friend got another text from her next door neighbor asking for help. “I’ll be right back,” she said. I didn’t see her for 20 minutes. She missed the whole rest of the episode.
“What happened? Is your friend ok?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “my neighbor was just worried about the river rising. Another friend sent her the same text. Don’t worry. I calmed her down.”
We went back to watching the television.