film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

GagaArtpop.jpg

How the Internet Tricked You Into Believing Lady Gaga Made a $25 Million Dollar Mistake

By Genevieve Burgess | Music | March 31, 2014 |

By Genevieve Burgess | Music | March 31, 2014 |


When it comes to finding interesting news, the internet is both a blessing and a curse. Things like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have played parts in some recent political upheavals as ordinary citizens used those platforms to get information out, organize demonstrations, and communicate what was really happening in the face of media black outs. On the other hand, the ability to publish a legitimate looking news piece that has absolutely no firm backing has given rise to waves upon waves of shoddily researched stories with alarmist headlines that hang on the flimsiest of references.

One example of this was the oft-reported “factoid” that Interscope spent $25 million promoting Lady Gaga’s ARTPop album, and subsequently lost that money when the album didn’t perform up to expectations. You probably read about it, you may even have repeated it or gloated about it. But it wasn’t true. Bill Werde, the former editor of Billboard, lays out the facts in an excellent editorial, showing that the initial reports of the $25 million number came from two writers who seem to have been created out of whole cloth posting stories on a “user-submitted” news site. Bigger names got ahold of it and ran with it, and it somehow became the truth despite a complete lack of evidence.

Lesson of the day? Click a link or do a quick googling before hitting the “share” button and keep Snopes bookmarked.