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This is the folly of our times. Even when someone tries hard to create news so outlandish - so far-out - that NO ONE in their right mind would buy it, millions do! And they repeat it and are shocked by it. Many of the headlines even show up in places like....here!
"Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual."
This is why it is often useless to talk sense to many people - they aren't even close to being grounded in reality.
And he's laughing at "alt right conservatives"
"We live in an Idiocracy,” read a small note on Blair’s desk, and he was taking full advantage. In a good month, the advertising revenue from his website earned him as much as $15,000"
I echo the publisher of this satirical web site
"Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”
These people choose to be wilfully ignorant. Trump supporters dont care about issues, they just worship him because he "owns libs," hates Hillary, and insults/attacks people of color.
On the flip side, Trump detractors will believe anything written to "own" Trump... I give you the Gorilla Channel:
I'm not sure why this thread had to go so partisan. While the story was about a guy who set up a site to post Fake News toward the Right...liberal-minded people who are societally disenfranchised can fall victim to the same trap.
I thought the article did a good job of showing what's wrong with people not being careful about their information. Everyone should just read the article and take note to be careful about what you're reading on line. Right, left...it doesn't matter.
Last edited by ChristineVA; 11-18-2018 at 12:36 PM..
I'm not sure why this thread had to go so partisan. While the story was about a guy who set up a site to post Fake News toward the Right...liberal-minded people who are societally disenfranchised can fall victim to the same trap.
I thought the article did a good job of showing what's wrong with people not being careful about their information. Everyone should just read the article and take note to be carefully about what you're reading on line. Right, left...it doesn't matter.
That too was my take away. Perhaps some people in this thread are so defensive because they know they've been had in the past. Some will cling to a lie because admitting they were wrong changes their reality.
I'm not sure why this thread had to go so partisan. While the story was about a guy who set up a site to post Fake News toward the Right...liberal-minded people who are societally disenfranchised can fall victim to the same trap.
I thought the article did a good job of showing what's wrong with people not being careful about their information. Everyone should just read the article and take note to be careful about what you're reading on line. Right, left...it doesn't matter.
Correct, of course, but remember that Fake News and Echo Chambers and all the rest have their other facets - especially "whataboutism" and "false equivalency".
Obviously we are discussing generalities and the Right actually celebrates their recent recruitments of "non-college educated white males" as a demographic. I'd suggest that is the prime demo for many of these sites.
I would be very surprised if the audience for many of these sites is even 25% Female....put another way, 300% more males are fooled. I remember one of the movies about Wall Street (Boiler Room) where the #1 rule of the brokers is "Don't pitch the bit**" - translation, get the Doctor or Engineer on the phone to sell them penny stocks, but the wife knows better so never pitch her!
Yep - even "mainstream" right wing sites like Daily Caller...I checked....are scored 40 Female and 162 male (that is audience index)....infowars 35 Female to 168 Male.
PJ media - even further out - 25 Female to 178 Male.
These stats mean something....that more Males have fooled themselves than females when it comes to right wing and/or fake news and conspiracy sites.
Even among females - read the article - they often are being "created" on Facebook and by loneliness. The example is given of a liberal woman who now lived in Nowhere, NV and is stuck there.
"it was only on Facebook that Chapian had become a committed conservative. "
"soon Chapian was following more than 2,500 conservative pages, an ideological echo chamber that often trafficked in skepticism. Climate change was a hoax. The mainstream media was censored or scripted. Political Washington was under control of a “deep state.”
Make no mistake about it....these are not reasoned and logical minds working here. The web sites they read go from the completely fake to the 50% fake (really good propaganda has some truth in it, that's how it works).
It is sad. Too bad for the USA...when people cannot discern truth from lies all sorts of bad stuff happens.
It's sad but not surprising. Keep in mind that many people over the age of 70 or 80 are republicans. They did not have the internet until they were into middle age, and many (obviously not all) of them do not know how to differentiate between real news and satire. My grandfather is a prime example: He's a huge Trump fan and he routinely sends me fake articles from satire sites to prove his point. He just has no clue that just because it's on the internet, that doesn't mean it's true. Example: He insisted that the Muslims made it so we don't observe Labor Day anymore because he read it on the internet. I tried reasoning with him, telling him that obviously we still observe Labor Day and that Muslims as a group do not have the power (nor the desire) to stop that type of observance. But he showed me the website and said "it's right here, read it for yourself." I wasn't able to convince him, because he thinks if it's in print (even online), then it's fact-checked and true. (Except for those nefarious fact-check websites, though... he believes they're all lying to us all.)
Another segment is evangelical Christians who take everything that their pastors tell them as, well, gospel truth. Many of these pastors will mislead their congregations. I have seen it happen more than a few times, where someone goes to church and says "my pastor said...." and brings up some weird far right-wing conspiracy theory or some talking point the pastor heard on Infowars or similar.
While there are not-so-bright people on both sides, and while anyone can fall into that echo chamber issue if they aren't aware of it and consciously seeking out other information, I think the two groups I mentioned are what make it seem like republicans/conservatives are more gullible. They have very gullible people lumped in with them. I bet if you take 20, 30, 40, and 50 year olds who do not go to far right-wing evangelical churches and line them up by political affiliation, you'd find that a roughly equal number of wackos believe nuttery on each side. But once you add in the elderly people who don't know how to use the internet as well as the people who go to churches with wacky pastors, they make the conservative conspiracy theorists and hoax-believers skyrocket in number.
This is the folly of our times. Even when someone tries hard to create news so outlandish - so far-out - that NO ONE in their right mind would buy it, millions do! And they repeat it and are shocked by it. Many of the headlines even show up in places like....here!
"Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual."
This is why it is often useless to talk sense to many people - they aren't even close to being grounded in reality.
And he's laughing at "alt right conservatives"
"We live in an Idiocracy,” read a small note on Blair’s desk, and he was taking full advantage. In a good month, the advertising revenue from his website earned him as much as $15,000"
I echo the publisher of this satirical web site
"Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”
Actually, your post is no different than the fake news article. You assumed people believed it and they were Trump supporters. Do you have proof for that? How many believed? There are people who believe all sorts of things written from all sorts of sights regardless of their politics. Maybe you should self reflect and look in the mirrror.
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This forum is likened to a schoolyard war of words- “youre stupid”. “No, your stupid”. Hopeless is the word that comes to mind.
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