Fake News Was Derived from the Fake Meme

The fake news epidemic was an offshoot of the already existent fake meme.  Thousands of memes on websites like Pinterest show famous figures using quotes they never made.  Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln are two in particular who are so widely misquoted that I find myself having to verify every single quote I see them making in a meme.  I have also seen photos of things in outer space that aren't even possible, like an "ice sculpture" nebula. Even the stars look fake. 

Thousands of people like and share this stuff, not realizing the people who made them were using satire or trolling.  While the fake memes have been a problem for years, only recently has fake news reared its ugly head, where people actually write fake articles and call it satire.  The danger with this is obvious; if someone has taken the time to write a whole article that isn't true, it becomes harder to doubt its merit.  And if enough people read it, fantasy is sure to become fact. 

The first thing I do when reading an article is look at the URL.  If it's an unfamiliar website I look into the quality of the source first.  Trusted sources like newspapers are generally acceptable, though there are several that I will reject because of their political bias.  If the headline looks like it was written to cause unrest, I also tend to ignore it (though I hadn't done that in the past), because people are easier to influence when they are angry.  Bloggers also tend to be biased, and I freely admit my own view is biased at times, but when reporting on important issues like these I try to keep an objective view. 

So don't be a victim of fake news.  Trust your gut if something looks wrong.  Don't be lazy and share a story without verifying it, much less reading it.  Know your facts first, because in the modern age we've all become distributors of news.  We must be responsible as quasi-editors of that impish quarter of society that uses the Internet to spread these gremlins of false information.  This goes for the liberal left as well as the conservative right.  Abraham Lincoln would agree.