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  • 2021-07-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Rep. Jack Kimble: ‘I Find It Very Suspicious ...’ – Truth or Fiction? (en)
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  • Rep. Jack Kimble: ‘I Find It Very Suspicious ...’ Claim @RepJackKimble (Rep. Jack Kimble) tweeted, I find it very suspicious that the virus now all of a sudden seems to be targeting people who didn't get that ridiculous vaccine. Has anybody else noticed this? Hmm, why is the virus only targeting those who stand up to government vaccination all of a sudden? Rating Decontextualized Like this fact check? Reporting In July 2021, Facebook users and pages began sharing screenshots of a tweet attributed to Rep. Jack Kimble (@repjackkimble), in which he appeared to speculate on the reasons unvaccinated people were likelier to be infected and become ill: I find it very suspicious that the virus now all of a sudden seems to be targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine. Has anybody else noticed this? Hmm, why is the virus only targeting those who stand up to government vaccination all of a sudden? That tweet originally appeared on July 18 2021: I find it very suspicious that the virus now all of a sudden seems to be targeting people who didn't get that ridiculous vaccine. Has anybody else noticed this? Hmm, why is the virus only targeting those who stand up to government vaccination all of a sudden? Florida is where wokes go to die... Please enable JavaScript Florida is where wokes go to die — Jack Kimble (@RepJackKimble) July 18, 2021 Although it didn’t have widespread engagement on Twitter, it was popular on Facebook as a screenshot: Clicking through to the individual posts indicated that the tweet was often shared in image format with neither a link nor any additional context: Clearly, the apparent inability of Rep. Jack Kimble to reach a conclusion on why the virus now all of a sudden seems to be targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine struck readers as an example of marked medical ignorance, fitting their preconceptions about vaccine hesitancy. Many lamented the death of satire, or mused that in a sane world the tweet would be satire. One popular share of the tweet came from the Facebook page Tyrannowhale , on July 23 2021. In a post, the page explained: looooool, this faux Twitter account is hilarious! [link] But it’s just parody. Tyrannowhale linked to a September 2010 Washington Post article about the very same Rep. Jack Kimble, and the prospect and practice of mistaking a satirical Twitter account for an authentic one: Jack Kimble is not a member of Congress. Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart learned this the hard way. Capehart made the mistake of referring to Kimble in a [September 2010] post as if he were an elected member of Congress. Capehart’s post [in September 2010] read: Why have the wars cost so much under Obama? tweeted @RepJackKimble (R-Calif.) at 7:40am on Sept. 2 [2010]. Check the budgets, Bush fought 2 wars w/o costing taxpayers a dime. This stunning bit of fiscal ignorance earned him a tart barnyard expletive from @MWJ1231. But that exchange only highlighted the need to remind folks that the soaring deficits that have freaked them out — and rightly so — didn’t get started with the inauguration of President Obama. But Kimble is not a member of Congress; he just plays one on a blog, YouTube and on a Twitter account from which this particular tweet originated. As of July 23 2021, @repjackkimble’s Twitter biography read: Congressman from CA’s 54th District. E Pluribus Unum–In God we Trust! Profiles in Courageousness [link] Washington, DC [link] Joined June 2009 A July 18 2021 tweet from Rep. Jack Kimble (@repjackkimble) began: I find it very suspicious that the virus now all of a sudden seems to be targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine. That tweet was enormously popular on Facebook in out-of-context screenshots, but far less so on Twitter, where it was much clearer that the account was a parody. While some pages took care to clearly mark the screenshot as satirical, several more did not — lending credence to the inaccurate idea the tweet was real, and inadvertently showing one of the most reliable ways that skepticism can lead people down the same garden path as open gullibility. Update, October 27 2021: In late October 2021, the text of the tweet was copied into a Facebook post, anonymized, and re-shared to Twitter as novel content: pic.twitter.com/qEbzBBVrYp — Conservative Self-Owns (@ConSelfOwns) October 27, 2021 Posted in Disinformation , Fact Checks Tagged @repjackkimble , decontextualized , out of context , parody , rep jack kimble , satire , satirical twitter , viral facebook posts , viral tweets (en)
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