Fake news, it isn’t just a catchphrase for news that’s about you that you don’t like. In fact, much of the actual fake news calls itself satire and sounds just believable enough to be true. Such is the case with MediaMass, a site that calls itself “media criticsim through satire” if you click on the “about us” section of their site. However, the site reported that Motley Crue was reuniting for a new album and tour, and many took that as gospel, leading Nikki Sixx to label it as “bullshit,” and having the fake news site issue somewhat of a retraction.
The thing about the story is that even though the band played their last show on December 31st, 2015 and signed a contract saying that they were officially done, the MediaMass story is just believable enough to get some unsuspecting people to believe it. Their version of “satire” isn’t funny, in that there’s nothing that makes this story unbelievable except for the aforementioned contract. The article cites a “source” saying the band had eight songs written and that no representativess would confirm anything. Hard to see what’s satirical about it, in that it’s not immediately hysterical, like The Onion’s story about Metallica board members debating a riff or The Hard Times’ article about a black metal vegan burning down a Church’s Chicken.
Sixx took to the internet to refute the story, sounding a bit like Donald Trump. He has a point though. While fake news exists, it’s up to real journalists to vet the article and the sources. If you can click on a hyperlink to see that it’s an obviously fake source, it’s wrong. Even if it was a legitimate source, this shouldn’t have been news. The article says that “a representative had no information on a new album, or any of the rock band’s future plans.” If it was legitimate, it would have at least named Eleven Seven or Tenth Street Entertainment. For their part, the retraction that the site offered in the article just leads to the page saying that the site is satire.
You haven’t seen the last of the Crue though, as their long-in-the-works film version of their autobiography The Dirt is apparently going to be made for Netflix.
