There’s been a huge uptick in fake news on X and other platforms. It appears that every conservative fantasy now manifests itself as a bogus claim – to be accepted uncritically by an uneducated and gullible public.
Just today, I saw a claim that Putin is demanding the extradition of Anthony Fauci as part of any peace deal:
It’s worth noting that the author of this tweet has almost half a million followers. I asked him for a good source, stating that I’ll interpret his non-response as an admission that he has none. The vast majority of comments appear to accept this report as truth.
One phenomenon I see over and over again is staged confrontations, sometimes featuring stupid black behavior and sometimes attacks on MAGA people. Even when they’re obviously staged, most of the comments express outrage; people never stop to ask themselves how it is that the camera is perfectly focused on the subjects just before the troubles start. They never seem interested in doing even some basic research before assuming it’s authentic. For example:
A few days ago, I found this one, and it’s from an account that I follow:
Sassafrass saw the Community Note and chose to keep her tweet up. I, for one, was dumbfounded that anybody would tweet this in the first place.
In a comment, Sassafrass explains herself:
It’s just a psa since we are all here. The post is community noted. I don’t get paid from this post. So you can rest assured that I’m not getting squat. But this is so fun. Reading the comments. I have gotten the race card pulled. (Yes, I don’t want muslims taking over America.) Called stupid. That may be, but stupid is as stupid does. Some of y’all can’t even write properly. So sit down. Let it rip tater chip. I have zero flips over here.
Indeed… however, most of the ignorant comments have been deleted once people realized what was going on. I wish I’d gotten screenshots from before.
I don’t want this to be a very long post, so I won’t post more examples, but every day brings new ones. I believe that it’s a combination of lefties poisoning the waters and grifters seeking clicks. I do wish there were better penalties for spreading misinformation.
Take your pick: Well-meaning ignorant MAGAs or brainwashed zombie lefties.
