I recently posted a comment on a blog post that tossed around a false and poorly presented accusation of the pop punk/alternative/whatever band Hoobastank. Before I get started please know that I’m not even a Hoobastank fan. I don’t own any of their music or merchandise, nor do I have any sort of affiliation with them. My issue with the accusation was that it was obviously a hoax and I felt that I had to speak up, before the masses played Telephone any longer with the whole thing.
The Lowdown
On Twitter there is a user that goes by the handle @hoobastank_band. For whatever strange reason this user posts numerous irrelevant posts with the #iranelection Twitter hashtag attached to them, and cloaks their mischievous URLs to prevent the not-so-savvy users from knowing what horror lies ahead for them. I’m not going to go into vivid detail as to what is seen once you click their shortened URLs, but I’ll provide a single word for you to Google: ‘goatse’.
In a world where encyclopedias have been replaced by Wikipedia (God help us) and the newspaper has been replaced by Digg, it’s easy to be mislead by subjective source material and unconfirmed tidbits of information. Such is the case with Hoobastank. In a post titled ‘What’s that smell? I think it’s GOATSE and HOOBASTANK‘, I voiced my opinion on the matter accompanied by some common sense and logic. Something some people seem to lack, even when the most paper thin hoaxes pummel them in the face. That’s the beauty of owning your own blog though. You can delete whatever comments you see fit for deletion. Whether they contain profanity or in this case, the obvious truth, it’s up to you. Master of your own domain (bad pun). Oh well, it was a worthy attempt. Fortunately I voiced my same thoughts on the official Hoobastank forum where they won’t be selectively removed at the administrators will. The fact that my post was pro-Hoobastank helps as well.
View the forum post here: ‘Hoobastank? This is seriously despicable of you to do‘ (nice spelling, pal.) (I fail at spelling. Thanks Anon.) Scroll a little ways down and you’ll see my post. In case for some reason my post gets deleted, I’ve included a screenshot.
click to enlarge
The thing that kills me about the topic on the Hoobastank forum is that nearly every post in there was immediately condemning Hoobastank for the whole ordeal. Whatever happened to fans? People jump to conclusions too easily. If you’re going to make such a big deal out of something, you should probably do some of your own research prior to setting the buzz ablaze on the web. That blog post currently has 75 diggs. I’ve posted far better material on Digg and barely got anything. Proof that the world thrives on destruction.
So to those of you who are quick to jump on the bandwagon and spread information, check the validity first. Like the saying goes: don’t believe everything you hear (or in this case, read). Not everything on the internet is true. Before you get all up in arms, check the source.