That rumor about the royal baby name leak took me 4 hours to fact check

So last week I saw this post going around claiming that a major tabloid had the inside scoop on the new royal baby's name before it was announced. I figured it was probably fake but I wanted to actually dig into it for my blog. I started by tracking down the original article and it linked to a source that turned out to be a parody account on Twitter. Then I spent another 2 hours cross referencing other gossip sites that all just copied each other without any real proof. By the time I finished I had 14 browser tabs open and it was midnight. The whole thing was just a chain of people repeating a joke that got taken seriously. Has anyone else fallen down a rabbit hole trying to verify one of these celebrity rumors?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomasgonzalez15d ago

Wait, how did you even know where to start tracking the original article? I feel like half the battle with these celebrity rumor rabbit holes is just figuring out what the hell the actual source is. I got burned real bad last year trying to debunk a story about a singer faking their tour dates. It took me a full day to realize the original "leak" was from a fan account that had like 300 followers. Did you end up finding any actual evidence that the story was totally made up or did you just hit a dead end of people copying each other?

kellygrant15d ago

That thing you said about the original "leak" being from a fan account with 300 followers hits so close to home. I actually read somewhere that a lot of these royal family rumors start on some obscure gossip forum where people just make stuff up for fun, then a bigger account picks it up without checking. In my hunt I found a tweet from some random user that literally said "i heard the name is arthur" and by the next day five different "celebrity news" sites had turned it into a full story with "sources say." The wild part was when I tracked the parody account the tabloid cited it had a pinned tweet that said "this is a joke account" in their bio. Four hours of my life gone because nobody bothers to read bios anymore.

susan8114d ago

Oh, you're close but not quite right about that part. The fan account with 300 followers was actually a bit more deliberate than you think. I found their old tweets and they had a whole thread confessing they made up the "Arthur" name as a joke because they were bored. Then a gossip blog with like 50k followers scooped it up and ran with it as a "hot tip from a palace insider." The really funny part is when the fan account tried to come clean in the replies, the blog blocked them and kept the story up for three more days. I lost two evenings to that whole mess, and I still can't look at royal baby coverage without rolling my eyes.