The concept of fake news and disinformation is not something new, but something that has been around for as long as man was able to communicate. The other day I was listening to a podcast about “The Mystery of the Mullet”, an hourlong discussion trying to discover the origins of the word mullet. After years of research but some parties, they discovered that the “smoking gun” evidence had been fabricated by an internet troll and their friends for giggles and laughs. They spent weeks carefully editing a magazine cover, to make it look like a special edition issue and wasted years of other peoples lives. This happened through the social media site, Reddit, and until the users apologized years later for their actions, they had completely influenced other people’s thinking of the matter. The unconscious effect of the confirmation bias combined with easy to see documentation on the internet is enough to make certain people believe anything.
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