February 2, 2014 - Did a man marry a dog in California? No, but there are a lot of people who are busy re-tweeting, "liking," and copying-and-pasting a fake news story about it. The story is a hoax, but a lot of gullible sheeple
actually believe the story, even though it's painfully obvious that it's a not real.
It's damned depressing to know that so many people are so damned ignorant that they are not able to distinguish parody from reality.
I came across the fake story via a timeline photo on Facebook today. It was reposted (shared) by "J," who apparently swallowed the story as truth. She even prefaced her repost of the photo, originally posted by "Scannews," with this comment:
"And the left has destroyed the definition of marriage. And here we go!!!!"
 |
Nigeria's best news source? |
Sure, here we go. Another gullible fool breathlessly spreading bad information. With four exclamation marks, no less. What's really happened is that morons have destroyed the definition of "well informed."
"J" was so eager to believe the man-married-dog story that she didn't do 60 seconds of research to confirm whether it was true -- or not. She is probably unaware that the photo and fake story she shared were posted by a Nigerian news organization called Scannews.com.
Actually, Scannews shamelessly copied and pasted an old item from a parody website called
National Report, where all of the "news" stories are fake.
But NR doesn't intend to fool anybody. They're just having fun, in the same way that The Onion produces fake news with a smirk and a wink. In 2002, a major Beijing newspaper republished a fake story about the U.S. Congress demanding a new Capitol building with a retractable dome. Ridiculous, yes, but the Beijing Evening News "translated portions of the Onion's tall tale word-for-word in the international news page,"
reported Wired.com. In exactly the same way, Scannews was suckered by the National Report man-animal marriage spoof story.
The "Scannews" page on Facebook represents Scannews.com, an online Nigerian news service. The "
About Us" page at their main website is sadly amusing. It says this: