Par for the Course

Over Labor day weekend of 2025, something entirely unforeseen struck the United States, as speculation spread about President Trump and his condition. Specifically, whether he was alive or dead.

On Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube shorts, and even Facebook, people turned into prophets and seers to figure out what happened to President Trump, and the general conclusion that many came to was that he was deceased. Concerns rose in regards to a black age spot on his hand, a similar one which Queen Elizabeth had shortly before her passing, and the lack of our President's presence on the golf course was only additional fuel to the fire. Aside from this, reports of Vice President J.D Vance making cryptic statements about a “terrible tragedy” made landfall, which only deepened the theory.

But on September 2nd, the internet suddenly went quiet as none other than President Trump seemingly rose from the dead, and made a public statement that he was well, alive and kicking. After days of constant talk about the death of our country's primary political face, the theory which claimed hours of dedicated prophesying time from citizens across the nation seemed to dissipate into thin air. But, this situation induces a question: one even better than why one weekend of significantly less golfing (not even none, just less) from our President proves that he is no longer with us.

Why do we ignore media misinformation?

Donald Trump’s sudden death isn't the only instance of media misinformation. In fact, most things that we see online are misinformative to some degree. Partially, this can be explained by the fact that social media is utilized by humans, who can best be described as extremely opinionated, and often dangerously so. With social media as an outlet, our society tends to express every minor, irrelevant, and biased thought and feeling they experience and put it on full blast for all to see. When people post, we know exactly what we mean by it and to what degree we swear by it, but quite often we entirely disregard what will be thought of it from an outside perspective. More often than not, others take what they see as literally as possible, as if it were the Given Word.

This creates a dangerous cycle: speculation becomes belief, belief becomes "truth," and "truth" becomes fuel for further misinformation. What began as a few speculative posts about a black age spot spiraled into a nationwide theory that the President of the United States had died, and without a single piece of verified proof of the fact. In our own lives, it can be easy to pass by these types of things and never even spare a glance. Somebody in your class says your teacher is having a rough spot in her marriage after she assigns some extra homework, or your friend is acting weird and you automatically assume she doesn't like you anymore. But instead of this type of low-scale and low-risk situation, this specific event took center stage nationally and commanded the attention of millions of citizens who lay on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum. To put it simply, we were united in the prospect of disaster.

While most people hate to admit it, most people are fundamentally alike, and almost all of us live for drama, which media sensationalism hand feeds to us. When ridiculous yet disastrous rumors spread online, no matter how silly or unbelievable, it gives our society something to talk about. Instead of debates over political parties and debacles in regards to human rights, many avert their gaze to current situations, often false ones, that quickly circulate on social media platforms. This isn't because our nation doesn't want to fight with one another, because we as a people most certainly enjoy endless arguing above all else, but rather because our attention spans are so weak. Watching a twenty second Tiktok on the Rapture or how dubai chocolate and lububu’s kill children when unsupervised are infinitely more entertaining than a real, raw debate on human rights and equality. What’s worse is that the platforms themselves are built to reward misinformation. The more outrageous, emotional, or “clickable” a post is, the more likely it is to be shared. Algorithms aren’t designed to prioritize what’s true, after all, they prioritize what performs. 

And truth, unfortunately, doesn’t always go viral.

So, honestly? If you ask me, we ignore media sensationalism and misinformation because for most people, it’s the most entertaining option. It provides constant drama, fuels doomscrolling and surface level conversation with peers, all while making people feel included once they have been “informed” on the latest issue, scandal, or theory.

But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what the cost of all this entertainment really is. When every trending theory becomes a temporary truth, and when we give more weight to a viral video than verified facts, we chip away at our collective understanding of reality. And if we keep choosing the most clickable version of the truth over the actual one, we shouldn’t be surprised when we wake up one day in a world where no one knows what’s real anymore. Misinformation isn’t just a glitch in the system, but rather it has become our system. And, truth be told, unless we start treating reality like it matters, we’ll keep mistaking simple ways of life for national tragedies.

Admittedly, Trump not being seen golfing as much as usual could mean something bad. After all, it's been made abundantly clear that to him, ball is life. But at some point, our nation must consider what our media is turning us into, because before we know it, misinformation will just be par for the course.

Sources

Mixed Views about Social Media Companies Using Algorithms to Find False Information. Pew Research Center, 17 Mar. 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/mixed-views-about-social-media-companies-using-algorithms-to-find-false-information/.

Kumar, Srijan, and Neil Shah. "False Information on Web and Social Media: A Survey." Social Network Analysis and Mining, vol. 10, 2020,

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/False-Information-on-Web-and-Social-Media%3A-A-Survey-Kumar-Shah/1bb23fd4252a76b55ff77ed982fc78c3e06d1452

Pennycook, Gordon, and David G. Rand. "The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Stories Increases Perceived Accuracy of Stories Without Warnings." Management Science, vol. 66,

https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3478.