Elle Magazine shares fake Kanye West and Kim Kardashian news to push for voter registration

Publication heavily criticised for the controversial Twitter post

If there is one thing Elle Magazine should learn from their latest Twitter gimmick, it’s this: Voting is cool. Fake news is bad. Tricking people with fake stories will get everyone mad.

The publication is receiving major backlash for tweeting a fake headline involving Kanye and Kim Kardashian West to promote voter registration. The headline read “Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are splitting up” and linked to a page encouraging readers to register to vote and support women candidates in the upcoming US midterm elections.

The stunt is a copycat of a viral meme, meant to encourage voter registration, from an individual Twitter account. However, instead of Mr West and Ms Kardashian West, the tweet claimed Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson had split up. (They actually did.)

The main criticisms levied at Elle are two-fold. The first being that information warfare has become a prevalent issue in United States politics with propaganda mills influencing the 2016 presidential elections and President Donald Trump routinely berating members of the press by calling them “fake news.” The other is people that registering to vote should not be something women and younger Americans are tricked into doing. Thus, tricking readers to vote with a fake, clickbait headline feeds into the troubling narratives that voting is a chore, and that women and young Americans are not interested in voting unless they’re enticed with some celebrity gossip.

Several reporters, like Huffington Post's Jenna Amatulli, said stunts like the ones Elle pulled dangerously undermine honest journalism. “Proliferating actual fake news ― no, Kim and Kanye aren’t splitting up ― hurts the media’s credibility and is insulting to readers.

Yashar Ali, another journalist, lambasted Elle in a tweet: “When a random tweeter did this it was clever but now you’re just stealing their tweet and also spreading fake news.”

Others chimed in:

One high-profile journalist, however, praised Elle’s scheme:

But was the scheme worth it? One Twitter user pointed out that the fake headline could actually do more harm in getting young people to vote. “ELLE almost certainly deterred a significant number of people from voting,” A L A N tweeted. “Never underestimate the power of spite, or the love of hot goss”

Unfortunately, it seems like one person on Twitter is deterred from voting.

A word to the wise: If you want people to register to vote, just tell them to do it. That’s it.