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| - On June 7, 2024, Esspots.com published an article positing that Mike Tomlin, the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, had advised his team not to participate in Pride Month activities, the monthlong commemoration of the LGBTQ+ community. According to the article, Tomlin called the festivities "woke crap," adding that it had "no place in our team activities." The article began as follows:
Breaking: Steelers' Coach Tomlin Directs Team To Not Participate In Pride Month, "It's Woke Crap"
In a move that has sent shockwaves through both the sports and social communities, Steelers' Coach Mike Tomlin has directed his team not to participate in Pride Month activities, calling it "woke crap." This decision has sparked a heated debate, drawing sharp reactions from fans, advocacy groups, and fellow athletes.
The post was also shared to the SpaceX Fanclub Facebook page twice: once on June 6 (predating the Esspots story) and once on June 8. Neither of those posts performed particularly well. However, the claim was also posted on X on June 9, where it gained more than 64,000 likes.
But there was one major problem: The story was not true, and it originated from a site that calls its work satire. Esspots.com and SpaceX Fanclub explicitly describe their content as fictitious. Esspots' disclaimer reads as follows:
Welcome to Esspots.com, a website that specializes in satire, parody, and humor. Before you proceed to read our content, we would like to emphasize that nothing on this website is real. All of the articles, stories, and commentary found on Esspots.com are entirely fictitious and created for the purpose of entertainment only.
We understand that satire can sometimes be mistaken for actual news or events, but we want to make it clear that we do not publish factual or accurate information. We do not intend to deceive or mislead our readers in any way, and all of our content should be taken with a grain of salt.
NOTE For Fact Checking Patriots: Our Every Post on Website and Social Media is Properly Marked As "SATIRE". Every Image on Social Media has the following "Rated Satire" tag. Thank You
A helpful note indeed. The June 6 Facebook post was true to the disclaimer's word, marked as satire in the post's caption, which included the word "satire" at the end, and in the image itself (the watermark is hidden underneath the Facebook page's logo):
The June 8 post, however, did not include any indication that the story was satirical. Furthermore, the satire label was missing when the post went viral on X, leading many in the comments to assume the story was true.
For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.
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