Fake news is now headline news. The post-truth era is truly upon us. In a survey of readers of TheSpoof, two out of the three of them said that they believe stories on the online "joke" site are true.
Both of the two readers said that they received the stories in their Facebook feed and just assumed they must be fact. This is despite being led by clearly false headlines such as "Hillary's vagina considered for new navel base", "Trump reversed his sex change in the 90s" or "Mongolia disappears".
In an age awash with bullshit, where an internet search can tell you that the capital of France is Condom, the Moon was invented by Nigel Farage, or that Chinese people are allergic to penises, it is often hard to differentiate fact from fiction.
Many TV viewers are now incapable of distinguishing fictional programmes from news. In a recent and possibly fictional survey, a massive 37% of viewers of drama series Mummified Zombie Invasion thought they were watching a news broadcast.
Psychologists call it "the Hitler effect". They argue that ever since the second world war, the rise of propaganda and lies has increased exponentially, to the extent that now 29% of people believe Hitler was a fictional character, and another 17% believe he is still alive. More worryingly, 6% of people believe they are Hitler, and a whopping 89% of people will use Hitler in any discussion just because they feel it is relevant.
Surveyors are also in for criticism. 123% of surveys are now considered to be false. But 3900% of readers believe every statistic they see.
How can serious news media such as TheSpoof keep up when joke media websites like the BBC or CNN are so clearly lying?
