[incompatible]

If you want to find out whether Lil Tay is dead or alive, it's a bit of a conundrum. Apparently, you can't trust any sites or accounts that she might have, since they could have been hacked. It's unlikely that you could get any government verification like a death certificate right away, and there won't be one if she is still alive, and who trusts the government anyway. The verification that she is alive comes from "a statement provided to TMZ from Tay's family", but is there any reason to trust that? I've never heard of TMZ so have no idea how credible they are, and in any case perhaps somebody spoofed being Tay's family and they didn't check very hard, and Tay is actually dead. What are you going to believe, a video statement from Tay herself perhaps, which may be a deep fake?

Edit: Of course, I have no idea if Tay was a real person in the first place, or just a personality created by deep fakers.

Edit: Wikipedia (dubious of course) says that TMZ is a tabloid owned by Fox Corporation. Yeah, like I trust Fox. let alone some tabloid they own.

[enlyth]

TMZ are pretty much the de facto celebrity deaths reporters. They wouldn't risk their reputation by making up stuff like that.

[incompatible]

But according to the article, “When there’s no face to it, it seems like it’s a corporation, and corporations to a lot of Gen Z equal bad or untrustworthy”. Do they make an exception for TMZ?

[mcny]

I think you're moving goal posts here.

Do I trust TMZ if it tells me to do all my life savings into dogecoin? No. Do I believe if it tells me Michael Jackson has passed away? Absolutely.

There is nothing actionable for me with a celebrity's death but I'll take TMZ's word for it until proven otherwise and even then I'd expect tmz to publish a swift retraction.

Whether gen z trust faceless corporations I don't know but as a millennial, I know that it isn't a dichotomy. It isn't like faceless equals untrustworthy and a face equals trustworthy. I'm sure we have all listened to our CEOs and senior leaderships lie / "bend the truth" even when they know we know the truth. The only thing I'd like to urge and caution against is we don't continue the vilifying of future generations like the boomers did to us.

[incompatible]

Fair enough. Vilifying younger generations is a tradition that goes back to antiquity.