The internet allows people to share information around the world in seconds, whether that information is true or not.
Kanye West and his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, are experiencing this first hand after a nude picture of a young woman bearing a strong resemblance to Kardashian surfaced on Twitter. Various sources claimed West accidentally tweeted the picture and deleted, however, there is no evidence West tweeted the picture at all.
A rep for West told MTV RapFix, “In regards to this ‘story’ that Kanye posted and then took down intimate pictures on his Twitter account: TOTALLY FALSE. Laughably so. This phantom tweet never occurred on his account. This is obviously the desperate, sad act of someone seeking to gain media exposure by exploiting Kanye’s notoriety. Kanye doesn’t even know this person, has never seen this picture, and hasn’t been on his Twitter account for a day. It’s a shame that in our media culture, the rampant spread of this kind of irresponsible “reporting” occurs with such regularity and with such impunity.”
As other embarrassed celebrities have shown, nothing on the internet is ever deleted and had West tweeted the picture, there probably would have been a screenshot to embarrass him should he have chosen to deny it. There is no such screenshot. However, the actual owner of the picture, Amia Miley, took to her own Twitter page to clear everything up. “Apparently a naked photo of me eating is going viral…. as Kim Kardashian…. Im confused,” tweeted Miley. “im not going 2 argue about whether that pic is me or not.. want proof? look at the back dimple piercings. kim k doesn’t have those.”
Apparently, Miley tweeted the picture of herself with the caption “skinny girls can be curvy too,” over a year ago. This story shows how important it is for outlets to fact check. This story showed up in various news outlets, including a blog for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
