Just to clarify: Kanye West never claimed to be the next Madiba and we should be bringing Nelson Mandela’s name into far deeper  conversations.

It’s the article that’s been nearly impossible to miss if you’ve been anywhere near social media in the last three days. The Daily Currant, a satirical online news source, posted a fictional story on December 6^th about Kanye West claiming to be a bigger icon than the late Nelson Mandela. The perfect storm of the article’s timing and outrageous claims made the phony article go viral on Twitter, Facebook, and the web in general.

With a host of entirely made up quotes, the Daily Currant made fools of a lot of people. While it’s a funny read, the extreme amounts of sincere public outcry were funny in a much darker way. It seemed that almost no one checked their sources as zealots ran wild with the article and openly bashed poor Yeezus.

-Eileen B. Dorsey

(@idkeileenstwitr)