Clown Shoes

There were scuffles in the USA by sad losers who would get in a physical confrontation over sneakers. Stories reported shoppers fighting and arrests being made.

Scuffles broke out and police were brought in to quell unrest that nearly turned into riots across the United States on Friday following the release of Nike's new Air Jordan basketball shoes — a retro model of one of the most popular Air Jordans ever made.

It's unclear whether it was the 1% or the 99% involved.

In Georgia, officers said they had to break a car window to get two toddlers out after a woman went in after the shoes. They said she was taken into custody when she returned to the car.

No sneakers for you.

A new edition has been launched each year, and release dates had to be moved to the weekends at some points to keep kids from skipping school to get a pair.

Hey, they'll need some good footwear for their fried chicken career.

But here's where it gets interesting.

The disbelief over unruly crowds fighting and being pepper sprayed over Air Jordan Concords turned to mourning when it was reported on social media and blogs that a young man, 18-year-old Tyreek Amir Jacobs, had been killed for the coveted shoes.

Never happened.

"Nothing like that has happened here, and I hope we would know," said one Montgomery County police official. While media outlets in the district reported on disturbances around the area, none ended fatally. Still, as of this writing, some 12,000 people were participating in no less than eight Facebook groups about Jacobs' killing.

Next time you hear an unemployed 'journalist' sneering about the unmatched power of the Internet and blogs over the established media which won't employ him, consider this example, of a lie (or mistake) spreading like wildfire. People will have lost interest by the time the corrections are issued.