We've been over this before. Not everything you read on the Internet is true.
Twitter learned this difficult lesson once again this week when writer Jonathan Sun decided to test how gullible people were. The results were disappointing.
Sun posted this tweet of a doctored Google search results page, which purported to show that Willow and Jaden Smith's middle names were mirrored after their parents' middle names. (We already know that's the case with their first names.)
omg.. Will O. Smith and Jada N. Smith pic.twitter.com/6Dz6d5YB5Y
— jomny sun (@jonnysun) September 14, 2015
There's not an ounce of truth to this. Will's middle name is Carroll and Jada's is Koren -- but middle names aren't listed at all on either of their Google results pages. Oops.
Many were quick to express amazement or assert they had known about Will O. and Jada N. all along. (Many of those users later deleted those tweets.)
@jonnysun how in the world did you realize this — jackson (@tricycle_champ) September 14, 2015
Why are people only just realising this? I'm so frustrated https://t.co/3Oz1s6qCq9
— MicΔiaH (@NotSoRatchet) September 14, 2015
Some evaded the troll. Thank you, beacons of Internet hope.
@jonnysun this is unethical
— shut up, mike (@shutupmikeginn) September 14, 2015
this was so fuckin obvious tho https://t.co/6YfNe8nA2k— wooferzfg (@wooferzfg) September 14, 2015
Sun told BuzzFeed that he pulled the prank to shed light on how infrequently artists are credited for their original content -- often, original work goes viral without ever being fact-checked or properly attributed.
"What people don't understand is that original comedians and writers on Twitter are not making any money from tweeting their material," he said.