Last week the internet went into a frenzy over a headline from the media site NextShark: “Forget Zika Virus — China’s Hottest Olympic Swimmer Is Giving The Internet Yellow Fever.”
There are two seemingly offensive things about this title — dismissing the toll of Zika Virus, and using “yellow fever” to describe attraction to Asians. The Zika Virus reference was ill-advised, which NextShark has acknowledged, but the internet was primarily infuriated over the usage of “yellow fever”. There are over 3,000 comments on the original NextShark Facebook post, and both Huffington Post and Mic have written thinkpieces on the controversy blasting NextShark.