My Little Online Rumor Check Routine
So, I saw this thing pop up – “property brothers brother dies.” My heart kinda skipped a beat when I first read that, not gonna lie. I’ve watched those guys on TV for what feels like forever, you know? You kinda feel like you know them a bit, even though they’re on a screen.
My first reaction, though? Pure skepticism. The internet, well, it’s a bit of a circus sometimes. My gut usually screams at me to take any big, shocking news I see online with a massive pinch of salt. So, that was step one of my usual little process: don’t freak out, and definitely don’t hit share right away.
Then came my “let’s see what’s real” phase. This is pretty much what I always do when I see something like this:
- I absolutely did not click on the first dodgy-looking website that was probably screaming the headline. Nope.
- I opened a brand-new tab in my browser. Typed in something straightforward like “Property Brothers news” or “Jonathan Scott Drew Scott status” into a search engine I generally trust.
- Next, I specifically hunted for actual news outlets. The kind with journalists and editors, you know? The big, recognizable names. If something that huge happened to famous folks like them, it would be all over the main news channels, entertainment sites, that sort of thing.
- I also usually peek at their official social media pages. Drew and Jonathan are pretty active online. If, heaven forbid, something awful had happened, you’d expect some kind of official word there, or at least a very telling silence.
And the result of my digging? Well, just as I suspected, nothing concrete. No official announcements from any sources I’d call reliable. Their social media feeds looked pretty normal – new posts, everyday stuff. It all screamed “hoax” to me, or maybe someone got their wires crossed, or it was just some old bit of fake news doing the rounds again. That happens more than you’d think. Just the internet rumor machine doing its thing.
This whole episode really got me thinking, though. It’s wild how quickly these stories can catch fire and spread. It reminded me of this one time, years ago, back in my old neighborhood. We had this absolutely enormous, ancient oak tree right in the middle of the park. Everyone loved that tree. Then, one day, a rumor just appeared out of nowhere – the city was planning to chop it down to make the road wider. Boy, did people get upset. I mean, proper outrage. Folks were making angry phone calls, firing off emails to the local council, the works.
Turns out, the whole panic started because someone had apparently misheard a couple of city workers chatting about needing to trim a few branches from some tree on a completely different street. It just got twisted and magnified as it went from person to person. We actually had a big neighborhood meeting about “Operation Save the Oak” before anyone had the simple idea to just call the city planning department and ask them straight up. One quick phone call, and boom – rumor dead. But the amount of fuss and worry before that? It was crazy.
It’s sort of the same deal with these celebrity rumors, just on a much bigger stage. Someone chucks a story out into the void, whether it’s true or not, and it just takes on a life of its own. My little habit of checking things out first has definitely saved me from a lot of needless gasps and “Oh no, really?!” moments over the years. It’s a decent habit to get into, I reckon. Helps you keep your head on straight with the constant flood of information we’re all trying to wade through these days. You’ve just got to get good at sifting through the junk, you know? Otherwise, you’d spend your whole life reacting to whispers.
