Ctrl Alt Facts and Delete News

You've probably heard of fake news. Maybe you've heard of alternative facts. But what you're definitely thinking, deep down, is:

Yep. I picked a budgie as the best gif.

So. Fake news. It's been used for years, seriously - but nobody really worried about it until things started to change last year.

What the fuck is fake news? You ask. What could possibly be fake news? Well here are, according to Buzzfeed, the top three fake news stories (or lies) shared on Facebook...

1. "Obama Signs Executive Order Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance In Schools Nationwide" Link: Click here Written by: abcnews.com.co Stats: 2,177,000 Facebook shares, comments and reactions

2. "Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement" Link: There are too many to list Written by: Way too many websites Stats: 961,000 Facebook shares, comments and reactions

3. "Trump Offering One-Way Ticket To Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America" Link: The only links available are trolling you now, sorry Written by: tmzhiphop.com Stats: 802,000 Facebook shares, comments and reactions

Many people would probably look at those and think - surely that can't be serious? Surely that's not true?

What fake news really means, is sharing false information - lies, if you like - disguised as real news, in order to mislead the reader. It also probably gets the creator money or political gain.

Fake news is something that's grown and grown in the last year or so. You might have seen Uncle Jim share something (maybe racist, or at least xenophobic) on Facebook and want to slam that bullshit button so hard it blows up. Chances are, he's shared a news article from a website you've never heard of. www.wehateeuropeanscum.com or something like that. Yeah, that's probably fake news. Or a load of old cobblers, perhaps. ​

What about The Onion? The Daily Mash? I hear you ask from afar. Well, they're news satire - designed to poke fun at what's happening in order to prove a point. It's more ironic and aimed at people who know it's not true.

(Click the link and read the article for a full example - trust me, it's worth it.)

The problem with fake news is that people just accept it to be true without thinking about where they're reading this shit from, share it blindly with all their Facebook friends, who accept it on face value - their friends are sharing it, so - and the cycle starts again. There's a lot of truth in people trusting their friends more than they trust a faceless name, so when a buddy shares something you might find shocking or agree with, you're probably going to accept it and share it yourself.

As I've mentioned in a previous post about Britain First, it's done quite a lot. It's quite clear that Britain First got more Facebook likes from doing the "how many likes can this WAR HERO get? LIKE AND SHARE!!!1!" posts that we've all seen before. Since then, they themselves have been publishing (on their own website) stuff that's out of date or simply not double checked as being true. And people just accept it, react to it and share the post.

How much of a problem can it really be? Well, according to The Guardian, it seems that a lot of Trump supporters were influenced by widespread fake news stories. 73% of those interviewed in a poll thought that billionaire financier George Soros paid protesters to disrupt Trump's rallies - a fake story which the President actually later repeated himself.

Nobody knows what you're saying, Donny. Anyway...

I bet you're wondering what you can do to stop fake news like this happening. So here are some basic tips...

1. Google is your best friend. Double check everything you read - even if you're not that sceptical. Get another source - preferably from somewhere you deem to be accurate, like a news organisation you've heard of before. Triple check if you need to.

2. Look at the URL.

The biggest fake news story of last year (mentioned above) has a very similar URL to abcnews.com - the real site - and looked pretty similar in style, too.

3. Be careful of over-using grammar! If a news story Capitalises Every Word In A Headline, or uses RANDOM CAPITALS or weird grammar?! Don't trust it. That's not usually the case with news. Double check it all again.

4. Don't assume anything to be true any more.

Yeah, it sounds really depressing. But if you expect the worse, or expect people to lie to you, you'll be more suspicious and want to find stuff out for yourself.

5. Call em out.

If your Racist Uncle Bob is sharing this stuff and you're pretty confident that it's fake news, tell him. It might end up in an argument - don't say you weren't warned - but at least you can tell him it's false.

And, to end this part on fake news, I've got this video to show you. Every time I hear the original, I think of fake news. That's how dreadful my life has become. Enjoy.

Moving on...

Alternative facts, as a term, seems pretty ambiguous. Alternative facts should be categorised into the same "bullshit pile" as fake news.

Alternative facts came about less than a month ago and it talked about what Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, said about the crowds at the President's inauguration. Basically, Spicer said there were more there than the media said (and there was the largest ever crowd), and Kellyanne Conway, an assistant to the President, defended him using the famous term.

Head to 1:30 in this video for some absolute gold.

Hitting that bullshit button fast enough yet?

Here are some questions you're probably going to be asking while reading this...

So alternative facts are basically lies then?

Pretty much, yes. Though the people telling them will insist they're not lies.

Where does this come into fake news?

The two are quite linked together. You can just imagine that people who tell alternative facts would probably get their info from fake news, or maybe fake news could get some stories they think are legitimate from alternative facts. Pretty weird stuff.

Are there any alternative facts that have been absolute corkers?

Yes. The same woman that created the term, made up something called the Bowling Green Massacre in 2011. Which didn't happen! What really happened was two Iraqi refugees were arrested on terrorist-related charges. Nobody died. At All. An anonymous website was set up to raise money for the victims, which is either evidence of stupidity or total genius.

Something similar happened here in the UK. New UKIP leader, Paul Nuttall, claimed on his website that he lost a personal friend in he Hillsborough disaster (a tragedy in 1989 which saw 94 immediate deaths and over 700 people injured). This was found to be absolute bollocks and he later apologised, calling it a smear campaign. This all came just a week before he stood to be elected as an MP in Stoke-on-Trent.

It sounds like something out of 1984...

Yeah, it really does. You're not the only one thinking this, I promise! In fact, sales of 1984 by George Orwell have skyrocketed.

If you're reading this thinking "what the fuck is 1984?", watch this trailer...

I could call anything an alternative fact, then.

Yep. Like this is a picture of a horse. I'M NOT LYING, IT'S A HORSE. GREEN, PLASTIC WITH A BLUE HEAD AND WHEELS FOR LEGS. I'M NOT LYING! I'M PRESENTING YOU WITH AN ALTERNATIVE FACT. DEAL WITH IT, MILLENNIAL SNOWFLAKE!

Even stuff that is proven to be correct? Yep. Probably. I mean, the Battle of Hastings took placer on 30th February 1978. Gravity is a lie. The Queen's a lizard. That photo above is a horse. The entire world is presenting you with stuff and I'm just giving you alternative facts.

But why should I be so worried about stuff like this? Can't I just laugh at it?

Well, you could sit there and have a good old belly laugh about the stuff that's coming out of the Trump administration. The problem lies in the fact that they think they can get away with it - and that people all around the world blindly believe it.

If they think they can lie about something that can really easily be proven to be bollocks, what else are they going to try? Before you know it, it'll end up being something similar to North Korea...

All in all, be careful about what you're watching, listening to, reading and sharing with your friends. You can't be too careful or too skeptical about what's true and what's not. Give it some thought next time, okay?

#politics