Ever since Beyoncé won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album on Sunday, February 2nd, many country music fans would open up the Meta social media properties of Facebook or Threads to encounter memes or posts perpetrating false quotes attributed to country music legends, usually posted originally by accounts or groups set up to perpetuate this sort of fake anger baiting content on cultural or political issues.

No, neither George Strait nor Reba McEntire spoke out about Beyoncé’s Grammy win for Best Country Album, or Best Country Duo/Group performance. There’s a good chance George Strait didn’t even know it occurred, and neither George or Reba are known for speaking out about such issues. But these memes and other media went mega viral because so many people wanted them to be true, and virtually nobody was willing to check their authenticity, or speak up in opposition.

As media mogul Roger Ailes once famously stated, “People don’t want to be informed, they want to feel informed.” This might turn out to be the quote of the century as we all selectively choose information feeds that reinforce our preconceived notions as opposed to challenging them. People wanted these viral memes to be true, so they didn’t just believe them, they liked, commented, and shared them, codifying these false notions as truth in the minds of millions, even though they’re categorically false.

Another good quote is “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,” often attributed to Mark Twain. In the internet age, this is true times 20. The more you can get away with a lie, the more viral it will go. The more truthful and nuanced a given piece of media is, the more likely it will be buried.

Even more sinister is that AI now can detect when anger is swelling about a certain subject, and then author content that leverages social media algorithms that are specifically tooled to feed off of people’s anger. Though many in the media and outside of the country music community celebrated Beyoncé’s Best Country Album win, the vast majority of the country music community was incensed by it. This is what these false quotes preyed on.

Even more concerning, since AI learns by “scraping” the internet of content, AI itself might determine these quotes are true due to the pervasive nature of them. This is one of the reasons Saving Country Music has engaged in setting the record straight about Beyoncé’s album Cowboy Carter. It’s not just for the benefit of individuals who might read this website. It feeds into the information environment that AI is learning from and using to answer search queries, either through Google’s search window, it’s AI programming, or something such as Chat GPT.

Luckily, with this specific issue, there have been other major outlets such as NPR, The Washington Post, and others that also listened to Cowboy Carter, regarded Beyoncé’s quote “This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album,” and also reported the truth. That is why despite the Grammy’s claiming that Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter was the Best Country Album, when you simply Google, “Is Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ a country album?,” this is the result you get.

In the dystopian reality we seem to be hurdling towards, quotes like the ones attributed to George Strait and Reba McEntire could very well become established verified fact simply by the pervasive nature of them. Meanwhile, false notions perpetuated in popular culture such as the misconception that Beyoncé released a country album can be corrected.

One of the ways falsehoods can be stamped down is if the live, human professionals still left in media make sure to speak up, even when it goes against the notions or ideology of a given media outlet’s or individual’s audience, or the journalist’s personal desires. In fact, these moments might be the most important time to correct the record.