This Tweet Has People Thinking Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Are Getting Divorced

A perfectly executed Twitter prank has a few fans falsely believing that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are heading for a divorce.

Journalist Ashlee Marie Preston forced Twitter users to take a good hard look at their clicking habits on Friday when she posted what looked like a news story about West and Kardashian splitting up. The tweet was actually a joke, however, as the link led instead to a voter registration site, encouraging people to take part in the upcoming primary elections.

“Welp… it’s official…” Preston wrote. “Kim Kardashian finally decided to divorce Kanye West…”

Preston disguised the link as a bit.ly URL, but it led straight to Vote.gov, where U.S. citizens can check their registration and, in many cases, register online. She was undoubtedly mocking the country as a whole for fixating on West in the last several days while more pressing political matters got less and less coverage. In addition, she showed how stories about the celebrity family are prone to rack up clicks easily, while more nuanced political reporting struggles in the digital ecosystem.

Most of all, the replies to Preston’s tweet showed that many people still only read the headline before commenting on a story. The tweet has been shared more than 34,000 times making it look credible to users that see it pop up in their feeds. Before long, some users were responding to the news, clearly not having clicked on the link to discover that the story was fake.

“Did the Oval Office stunt clinch it for her?” one person asked, referring to West’s recent visit to the White House.

“Kim Kardashian gets no credit for leaving him,” added another. “Peace of garbage Kardashian never helped her own husband. She’s no better.”

Other people did not pick up on the joke right away, assuming that there had been some kind of mix-up with Preston’s link.

“Link’s gone, now goes to a voter site,” one person wrote. When others pointed out the joke, they responded again.

“Wow that went over my head!” the user wrote. “Whomp whomp… vote by mail ballot filled out and in the mail tomorrow!!!”

For those that were fooled, there were many others that got the joke right away. they responded with kudos for the prank, and a few sad comments about the population’s attention span.

“File this under ‘how to get the attention of Americans 2018,’” one person noted.

In point of fact, a report by HollywoodLife on Thursday claimed that Kardashian is “concerned about” her husband, though it made no mention of divorce. West’s White House antics dominated the news cycle for the last several days, and many were concerned that it was distracting people from the upcoming elections, recent climate change reports and other major stories.

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