The truth of the viral story about Keanu Reeves refusing to give the Whoopi Goldberg award

Keanu Reeves attends culinary demonstration during the 2023 BottleRock Napa Valley festival at Napa … [+]

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A tweet has gone viral claiming that actor Keanu Reeves has refused to give Whoopi Goldberg an award. But there’s absolutely no evidence that anything about the story is true.

“Breaking News Keanu Reeves Refuses to Present Whoopi Goldberg’s Lifetime Achievement Award: ‘She’s Not a Good Person’ Do you agree or disagree with him?” the tweet from an account called Punchy_Playz said on Friday.

The false tweet was sent on Friday and has racked up over 2 million views on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at the time of this writing. X has a fact-checking program called Community Notes that allows users to submit corrections or context, but this particular tweet hasn’t received a note yet.

Tweet with fake information about Keanu Reeves and Whoopi Goldberg that’s gone viral.

The fake story appears to have originated from a website called the Dunning-Kruger Times. But the Dunning-Kruger Times isn’t a reliable source of information. In fact, the entire purpose of the site is to trick people into sharing false information. The Dunning-Kruger Effect actually refers to a concept in psychology that some people of low intelligence are the most likely to overestimate their own cognitive abilities.

Plenty of stories from the Dunning-Kruger Times have gone viral in recent years, including one that claimed KitchenAid was pulling all of its products from Target. The story was published at a time when some conservatives were angry about Target’s LGBT Pride displays. But, of course, the story wasn’t true.

Texas governor Greg Abbott even shared a fake article from the Dunning-Kruger Times last year which falsely claimed Garth Brooks had been booed off stage at a concert in Texas. Strangely, the article from the Dunning-Kruger Times said Brooks had been performing in a Texas city called Hambriston, which doesn’t exist, an odd detail given that you’d assume the governor of Texas would be able to spot a fake city name in the state he oversees.

It’s not immediately clear why Keanu Reeves and Whoopi Goldberg are being used by this fake news site. But no celebrity is safe in the current media environment, as music star Taylor Swift can tell you.