Bravo, SPIN. With a little flourish and some Klosterman karma, you fooled hundreds of bloggers into thinking that Axl Rose was finally going to deliver after 15 years with Chinese Democracy.
I admit I laughed pretty hard when I read that everyone’s favorite overweight, jersey-wearing 80’s icon finally got it together. Though there is some seed of truth to the pending rumors – there are quite a few demos for the album circulating the internet – no one called Rose’s publicity manager for comment. Instead, some blogs got excited. Some even had the connections to double-check, and didn't. But when someone not blinded by the little halos around Axl’s cornrows noticed the April 1 review date, well, then all those breaking insider blogs sheepishly retracted their copy-paste claims.
Axl Rose 8, Blogosphere 0. (After all, this isn’t the first time.)
Though blogs are a primary source of gossip, with something so easy to check – like calling Rose’s reps or punching in the numbers of SPIN themselves – major mistakes (on April Fool’s Day, no less – for shame!) make it look like the blogosphere is just a bunch of talentless, unoriginal hacks who all crosslink to one person’s original (but completely false) material.
Oh, and did I get excited? No. I’m a GN’R fan for sure, but depending on Axl Rose to deliver a good album is like depending on Colin Powell to prove Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Welcome to the jungle, bloggers.
Zack Barangan @ Tue, 04/04/2006 - 12:18am
Ah. There we have it, the fatal flaw of blogging. You said it, bloggers can get so hot and bothered over juicy morsels of gossip that they willingly forget the fact that it could be false.
It's up to the denizens of the blogosphere to remedy this problem. We can become really legitimate if we tried.
P.S. I feel your pain man, I've been waiting for a new Fugees album since '97.