Simone Biles has no relationship with her birth mother, who abandoned her as a child. She grew up in poverty and was raised by her grandparents.
She’s worked hard for everything she has, whether it’s a nice bag, car, or house.
Why purposely paint her as a villain?
Community Notes provide the ultimate opportunity to drop a funny one-liner … all in the interest of fact checking, of course.
No matter how you feel about Elon Musk, and there are plenty of people who love him and plenty who loathe him, many agree he deserves praise for inventing something we can all appreciate.
No, not SpaceX rockets.
Not Teslas.
We’re talking about the Community Notes feature on X (formerly Twitter).
The feature allows users to add context or fact checks under X posts. And while fact-checking is an important function, that’s not the best part of Community Notes.
The best part is the ability for a user to, in just a few words, totally and hilariously destroy a narrative. If X awarded a Community Notes of the Day Award, Friday’s winner might be a note left on an X post by the UK’s Daily Mail Online.
The newspaper posted a story it had done on Simone Biles. The post shows a photo of the Team USA superstar gymnast with her Range Rover, along with a story blurb: “Simone Biles flaunts her Birkins, Range Rover and Texas mansion — but the $25 million Olympic gymnast has given no hand outs to her penniless birth mom who works as a cashier to make ends meet.”
If one didn’t know the whole story, that blurb makes Biles sound almost heartless. Thankfully, the Community Note quickly clarified the issue.
“Her Mom abandoned her.”
“Source: Literally You.”
The Community Note included a link to a previous Daily Mail story detailing how Biles’ mom, Shanon, suffered drug and alcohol addiction and abandoned Biles and her siblings when the future Olympic star was only 6.
Biles’ mother said recently she hopes to one day reconcile with her daughter, and whether or not that happens, the Daily Mail‘s implication, that Biles owes her mother something, met Community Notes defeat.
The best thing about Community Notes smackdowns is their brevity. They’re the ultimate opportunity to toss-off a great one-liner … all in the interest of fact-checking, of course. Take the football fan who praised Colorado’s QB Shedeur Sanders earlier this year.
“Shedeur Sanders looking like Patrick Mahomes out there. The Big 12 has NEVER seen a QB of this caliber before,” the post read.
Community Notes did not approve.
“The Big 12 has seen QBs like Patrick Mahomes because Patrick Mahomes played at Texas Tech from 2014-2016.”
So Community Notes can be a force for good in setting the facts straight. And everyone needs a good laugh now and then.
