Some of you might have been aware last week that Donald Trump made a bit of a fool of himself by retweeting a photo of Fred and Rosemary West, after user @feckhead asked him to share a photo of "My parents who passed away". The media jumped on this as an excuse to hold off on reporting any real news and promptly crucified Trump in the headlines.
Apparently some Twitter users found all this so hilarious that they just had to try it again, this time conning Billy Ray Cyrus into retweeting a picture of Jimmy Saville.
Here's why this really needs to not be a thing.
Firstly, (and I am absolutely going to take Donald Trump's side on something, so brace yourselves), a person's first reaction when being sent a complimentary tweet from what appears to be a grieving son is not to Google the fucking picture. The reason the first reaction is not to Google the fucking picture is that it might not turn up anything if the picture is of someone famous (like Fred and Rose West) and definitely won't if the picture actually is of poor @feckhead's dear old mum and dad. So even the most cautious of users could potentially fall for this.
Secondly, it's not funny. The joke here is that Trump and Cyrus didn't recognise heinous criminals who gained infamy in countries that, and I cannot stress this enough, Trump and Cyrus don't live in. The concept of world news as it's done in Britain is by no means a global thing - our country is small enough that we have to report on external affairs just to keep the news interesting; America isn't. The US news rarely reports on stories outside the US border unless they directly affect the US, so the fact that Trump and Cyrus had no idea who the people in the photos are is completely understandable. It'd be like mocking a citizen of North Korea for not recognising Che Guevara on one of those ubiquitous T-shirts. They've never been exposed to that knowledge, so all you're achieving by poking fun is to make yourself look like a raging douchenozzle.
Thirdly, as mentioned above it gives the media an easy out to generate ratings without actually reporting anything of substance. It's an excuse to run a week'#s worth of "FAMOUS PERSON MAKES A MISTAKE" headlines that distract from anything of substance going on at the time (seriously, click that link). The media has grown profoundly lazy in recent years, and will happily pander to the lowest common denominator in a quest for ratings. They need to be given as few excuses for this as possible.
Finally, this "trend" needs to stop before it starts for the sake of everyone out there who actually does want to do a bit of good every now and then. Trump's retweet was meant with good intentions, I'm sure. Okay, a cynical mind would call it a publicity stunt but would that really matter, had feckhead truly been a son in grief? I think not. It's a good thing that people are willing to engage in such tiny acts of kindness towards one another, and the great thing about the Internet age is that now such acts can transcend such concerns as class and national boundaries and allow anyone to reach out to their role models, and for those role models to reach back.
This whole debacle makes everyone that bit more guarded about such things (as arguably it should) and makes such acts that bit less likely to occur. That's not making the world a better place for anyone, so for feck's sake cut it out.
