Real News vs. Fake News… Guidelines For Users
Recently, there have been numerous stories in the media about fake news. However, with the wide dissemination of fake news, it can be difficult to determine which fake news stories are real and which are fake. To help our readers in this regard, we offer the following guidelines:
- How to tell real news stories
Real news stories are those which are upsetting, depressing and/or ridiculous sounding. For example, suppose you were to read the following headlines just a few years ago…
“Twitter-Obsessed Reality TV Star Elected President of U.S.”
“Former Olympics Decathlon Champion Gets Sex-Change Procedure.”
“Kim Kardashian Doesn’t Publicly Expose Her Rear End for an Entire Month.”
“Dems Get Tough on Russians. Some Repubs Say, ‘Back Off. More Important Things to Worry About.’”
You’d undoubtedly think these were all fake news, yet they are real.
- How to tell fake news stories
Fake news stories are those which sound far-fetched, but which some people really want to believe are true, so they do. For example, check out the following headlines:
“Hillary Clinton Caught Eating Kittens Stuffed With Hummus While Wearing Burka and E-mailing U.S. Security Secrets to Terrorists.”
“Donald Trump Shoots Seven People on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Supporters Remain Loyal. ‘We Told You He Was Different,’ They Say.”
Sounds absurd, we know, but we guarantee some people would believe them. The question is why. According to the Institute for the Preservation of Fake news, there are three reasons:
- Such stories re-enforce what they already believe.
- They are gullible morons who are too lazy to check out the veracity of the story.
- They think anything they read on the Internet is true, even this crap.