Netizen Admits To Causing “Massive Spread Of Fake News” About A K-Pop Idol With A Single Edit
A netizen admitted to spreading misinformation about a second generation K-Pop idol.
On March 18, Reddit user @juuffee posted on the community r/TrueOffMyChest something they did several years ago that they still regret. When they were 14 years old, they randomly decided to edit the biography pages of K-Pop idols. One of them was 2AM‘s Jo Kwon who they gave the fake former stage name “Sacre Bleu.”
I was reminded of my shameful past yesterday while talking to a friend. When I was a teenager, probably 14, I thought it was hilarious to edit Wikipedia articles with random incorrect information. I was also a huge K-Pop fan, so a lot of my ‘victims’ were K-Pop idols. Well, one day I thought it would be funny to edit artist Jo Kwon’s Wikipedia page to say that his former stage name was Sacre Bleu. Why? I have no f*cking idea. I guess I just thought it was a funny expression and I was deep in my lolz so random xD phase.
— @juuffee
This joke unexpectedly took on a life of its own. Instead of the site’s moderators taking down the misinformation, it stayed on the page and spread to several other K-Pop sites. Fans began taking the fake news of Jo Kwon’s former stage name, Sacre Bleu, as fact.
I was expecting the mods to correct my dumb joke within a couple of hours, but to my surprise, it didn’t get removed. In fact, it spread like wildfire. News articles, fan pages, k-pop profile sites, famous birthdays, ALL started including fucking SACRE BLEU. Confusion spread among the fandom, but most just ran with it as a fun Jo Kwon fact despite ZERO proof to back it up. Because it literally just came from my stupid 14 year old mind. I have compiled a small collection of Sacre Bleu here to show just how bad it got, but all you have to do is Google ‘Jo Kwon Sacre Bleu’ and it shows up.
— @juuffee
Wiki pages…
…X (Twitter) accounts…
…K-Pop profile sites…
…and birthday compilations all put this single piece of fake news on their pages.
From being amused at a seemingly harmless prank, the Reddit user soon realized that their actions had real consequences. They stayed silent about it for ten years in fear of being apprehended.
I was mortified watching this happen in real time, but instead of coming clean about my wrongdoings I decided to completely disengage because I was 14 and scared of consequences. I never told anyone until now, over 10 years later.
— @juuffee
Luckily, traces of “Sacre Bleu” were soon erased from Jo Kwon’s Wikipedia page. Some K-Pop fans and websites, however, still remember this period of time.
Jo Kwon’s English Wikipedia page has since been cleansed of any mentions of Sacre Bleu, but the damage has been done. His wiki pages in French, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and probably more, have never corrected the misinformation. Wiki data still has ‘Sacre Bleu’ stated as his former stage name. TO THIS DAY, several K-Pop profile sites have ‘Sacre Bleu’ stated as his nickname.
— @juuffee
At the end of the day, they couldn’t help but apologize to Jo Kwon about the misinformation that they spread, saying they “did him so wrong.”
I feel awful that I did him so wrong. I could have done him the courtesy of picking a cooler name, but I went with Sacre Bleu. This is my dark past.
— @juuffee
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