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Fake News Prompts Gunman To 'Self-Investigate' Pizza Parlor (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A rifle-wielding North Carolina man was arrested Sunday in Washington, DC for carrying his weapon into a pizzeria that sits at the center of the fake news conspiracy theory known as "Pizzagate," authorities said Monday. DC's Metropolitan Police Department said it had arrested 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch on allegations of assault with a dangerous weapon. "During a post arrest interview this evening, the suspect revealed that he came to the establishment to self-investigate 'Pizza Gate' (a fictitious online conspiracy theory," the agency said in a statement. "Pizzagate" concerns a baseless conspiracy theory about a secret pedophile group, the Comet Ping Pong restaurant, and Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, John Podesta. The Pizzagate conspiracy names Comet Ping Pong as the secret headquarters of a non-existent child sex-trafficking ring run by Clinton and members of her inner circle. James Alefantis, the restaurant's owner, said he has received hundreds of death threats. According to Buzzfeed, the Pizzagate theory is believed to have been fostered by a white supremacist's tweets, the 4chan message board, Reddit, Donald Trump supporters, and right-wing blogs. The day before Thanksgiving, Reddit banned a "Pizzagate" conspiracy board from the site because of a policy about posting personal information of others. Alefantis, the pizzeria's owner, told CNN, "What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences. I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away."
Maybe possibly some people know what satire is...
This is like defending some armed fucking nutjob because of Onion articles.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Almost all "pizzagate" supporters do not actually believe it. They promote it because they think it's funny.
This is 4chan, after all. They do it "for the lulz".
People who actually believe it are in the minority and are simpletons or mentally ill.
He had whiteness to protect him.
If this guy had been black, the pizza parlor would have been nuked from space.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is fairly typical thinking from conspiracy theorists.
They are the most gullible of people and just believe any crap that is put up on the internet. They like to believe that everyone else has no idea what is going on but in reality they are just eating the shit that other people make up.
Unfortunately, Poe's law.
There is nothing in the way of satire any more that is outrageous enough that some fraction of the people won't believe it's true.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I wonder why every official/mainstream outlet is so unified in denouncing this as "fake news", why it must be mentioned several times in anything mentioning Pizzagate, why the "fake news" phenomenon suddenly started getting a lot of attention around the same time. Hmmm. Nothing to see here, move along citizen. If your beliefs need to be changed then you will be notified through approved channels.
You mean Jon Stewart the comedian? Because I don't know of any Jon Stewart the journalist...
The funny part is that the Daily show often contained more news than the actual news
And at least the Daily Show is sometimes funny. Right wing fake news is always angry. I wonder why that is?
Even worse, Michael G. Flynn, member of the Trump transition team and son of the next National Security Adviser might be a 4chan shitstain and is spreading this story just for the keks.
Either way, it does not speak well of the Trump transition team. I see this morning Trump nominated a medical doctor who thinks dietary supplements can cure cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's interesting how much these fake news social media campaigns are drawing out the nutcases. It makes sense, social media tools are designed to reinforce one's beliefs and continuously show you things that interest you -- as well as relevant ads of course! I could definitely see a conspiracy nut get hold of an idea from Facebook or Twitter, then have it keep popping up in his feed over and over again, then have his friends repost it, then see streams of tweets reconfirming their beliefs.
Social media in this case is kind of like conservative talk radio, in that the most devout listeners to it seem to get locked into a feedback loop over certain ideas, never to change them again. Their host is angry, gets the listeners riled up and the audience feeds on the anger.
That said, this whole story is a pretty sad statement on how we treat mentally ill people these days. New York (where I live) is completing the process of shutting down almost all of their custodial-care institutions and dumping people out onto the streets. Basically, you'll need to be Hannibal Lecter to get an inpatient psych bed, so you'll likely end up in prison instead -- or if society's unlucky, you'll just sit there stewing for years until something makes you snap and shoot up a pizza place. I'm not saying we should go back to the bad old days of locking people up for depression, giving them lobotomies or abusing them...but I do think deinstitutionalization went way too far. People should be able to seek a diagnosis for mental illness without stigma, and get treatment if they need it. I'm convinced this is why we have so many mass shootings in the US. Look at Adam Lanza (the Newtown guy) -- according to all accounts, his mother basically hid his developing mental illness for years and refused to accept there was a problem. But, the sad thing is that even if she had sought help for him, she wouldn't have been able to get it.
As evidenced by this sad case (I hope the pizza shop owners sue this idiot and garnish his wages for the rest of his life), and the election, I think the case can be made that the Internet doesn't necessarily enhance society. It's an interesting turn of events, and certainly not one that I considered seriously. I had always thought that the Internet went to shit in the early-mid 90's, when the public-at-large started to use it in large numbers. I couldn't imagine how bad it would end up today, though. And, sadly, we have such a large amount of the world's population still not online, I fear that it's going to get that much worse. I'm honestly disappointed in humankind that something with so much potential as the Internet can go to such shit so quickly.
I don't respond to AC's.
I must be missing something, but I don't think all that means what you think it means. LMFAO. You are just proof we need to invest more in mental health.
"Fake News" is the rebranding of Hillary's failed "Correct the Record" campaign.
Trump only won because of Fake News! Facebook needs to censor Fake News! <Bad Thing For Us> is just another example of Fake News! Voter fraud doesn't exist! Reports of dead people voting and people being bused in are MORE FAKE NEWS!
Stay tuned to MSCNNNBC for REAL NEWS YOU CAN TRUST! How Vladimir Putin rigged the election for Donald Trump! 45 reasons the Electoral College is bad and needs to go away (#7 will shock you)! EXCLUSIVE - Voter fraud (it's real now, ignore that last report) helped Donald Trump win the election! BREAKING ALERT - Calls for a recount could put Hillary in the White House, where we desperately want her to be! Join the campaign to petition Electors to act faithlessly and give the Presidency to a losing candidate!
He was a nutcase, just like in this instance.
Apply Occam's Razor.
One nutcase, wound up by online trolls.
It's his right to do so everywhere in the United States of America, actually. You actually CAN walk around with an assault rifle! A few decades ago, nobody even gave a shit!
Who said it was an assault rifle? Do you know what an assault rifle is?
Yeah, it's all fake! Just like these crazy accusations against our pious clergy!
Remember to give on Sunday. Our defense fund is depleted again...
A white person does it and it's a mental illness, and we should feel sorrow and empathy. A black person does it and he's a thug who needs to be made an example of.
Learn to love Alaska
Wrong indicates something done in error. Fake news implies a deliberate action to invent the false news. One is an unintnetional error. The other is a deliberate fraud.
Learn to love Alaska
Why are we calling this "fake" news instead of "incorrect news" or "wrong news" or "wacko conspiracy theory"?
Because "fake news" has a very clear meaning that should be apparent to anyone who knows what the word "fake" means. Where do you use the word "fake"? You use it in places where something that is known to be false by the originator has the appearance of truth.
That's different from "wrong" or "incorrect" because those can result from simple errors. "Fake" implies that the person who creates the "news" KNOWS it's fake.
Fake news can have lots of different motivations.
-- It can be satire or parody, like the Onion.
-- It can be produced by people who just want to make money -- as it apparently were in this past campaign by some Balkan teens (who are hawking this fake news just like people hawk fake watches or "designer" purses).
-- It can be deliberate propaganda, made up by someone with a particular perspective intended to energize (or outrage) other people with that perspective.
-- It can even be a hoax created by those who want to embarrass their opponents by getting them to "take the bait" and then reveal that it's BS all along (again, something that multiple people have admitted doing to try to sabotage the past election).
All of these things are encompassed by the clear and unambiguous word "fake," i.e., something KNOWN TO BE false that looks like the real thing.
There are lots of folks who have been reading headlines about "fake news" recently and assuming it's about something else -- e.g., partisan sites spreading biased propaganda. But that's NOT FAKE NEWS. That's opinion or biased reporting or whatever. It may have its own problems, but biasing or distorting news by selectively choosing what to report or how to report it is NOT FAKE NEWS.
Actually making something up and knowingly publishing something literally false ("Person X did Y in city Z" when you know that didn't happen) *IS* fake news.
People who actually believe it are in the minority and are simpletons or mentally ill.
Who can own guns in North Carolina apparently.
So you're one of those people who is gullible and believes Jon Stewart's fake news?
Don't be so hostile about it.
Jon Stewart took clips of actual news and commented on them. You may not like his comments, but the clips were quite real. Now if your big argument against the left is you can't trust comedy central for your news source, then congratulations for stating the obvious. If your trusting any one source for your news, well that would be bad, let alone a comedy channel. CNN, NBC,ABC,CBS, NPR, CSPAN, many newspapers, and various others are generally not fake. (I know someone will say NPR is, but please provide some non anecdotal proof.)
Now what really scares the crap out of me is mainstream republicans refuse to call Don the Con out on his lies. Hell the speaker of the house refused to denounce trump's made of crap about millions of fraudulent votes, and there wasn't proof for a single one. That is the leader of the republican party continuing to just lie his arse off. He has frequently retweeted and used fake news. The sewage begins at the top. If the best you can bitch about is a comedy channel having a comedian on with a political opinion, well get over it and clean up your own party.
The lies spread by the right, and well just people wanting to make money off stupid peoples clicks are going to get people killed, and those deaths will be on Trump's soul. The Pizzagate crap almost did.
We should not be talking about being in a post truth world. Every politician who has ever retweeted, supported, or refused to denounce a fake story needs to be fired at the earliest possible time. No exceptions. No excuses.
Truth before party before everything. Everything else is likely to end in tears.
I doubt it.
Most of the publics skepticism for conspiracy theory was metaphorically decanted off as "conspiracy theory" after conspiracy theory was successively shown to be true during this election season and the last year in general, or else the world actually turned into a conspiracy theory all by itself. The media have spun, lied, covered up, and covered for to such a degree that no-one has any reliable institutional sources to turn to anymore.
Many people relied on newspapers and anchormen to inform them on what the truth was. What happens to all these people now that the media has thrown its credibility onto the same bonfire as the rest of the political class? How do they discern fact from fiction in the age of increasingly egregious bullshit, from poll numbers to Propornot, finding their way onto the front page of the New York Times?
Answer: They start reading the National Enquirer. And journalism has nobody to blame but itself.
They believed one of Trumps tweets about removing citizenship from people.
Yes it is fucking stupid to believe something Trump has written but he's getting into a position where some of the stuff he writes is going to have to be taken seriously no matter how stupid it is.
In all seriousness, I think that Ben Carson is an intelligent and accomplished man.
Ben Carson has single-handedly put to bed the notion that brain surgeons are smart people. And it was done pretty much by his own words and actions.
The fascinating part is that we now know you don't actually have to be very bright to do brain surgery. It's almost as if a person could be good at one thing and yet still be a total imbecile at everything else...
He might be a good brain surgeon, but I wouldn't let him fix my computer, tune my car, or hem my pants. And I sure as shit wouldn't let him "educate me" on what the pyramids of Egypt were built for.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I repeatedly have to remind a select group of friends when they send me sensationalist stories from The Onion that those stories are satire and not real. Their response to them is as funny as the posts themselves but extremely scary at the same time. For stories they send me from other sites I'm not familiar with I do a search for a reputable source with the same information. If I can't find any I tell them not to believe that site either. It's a constant whack-a-mole scenario. The average person just isn't that discerning.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Good. The quicker Trump fucks up irrecoverably, the quicker he gets replaced. Won't be long now.
Problem is his immediate replacement is Mike Fucking Pence. The cure may be worse than the disease.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The fascinating part is that we now know you don't actually have to be very bright to do brain surgery.
No, you have to be very intelligent. You spend a good chunk of your life learning about nothing but brain surgery.
The opportunity cost being that you don't have that time to spend on learning other things.
He might be a good brain surgeon, but I wouldn't let him fix my computer, tune my car, or hem my pants. And I sure as shit wouldn't let him "educate me" on what the pyramids of Egypt were built for.
Why would you? What ever made you think you could trust a doctor with a computer?
> It's not like pedophile scandals are that rare among people in power.
Uh, yes they are fucking rare.
Just because you've seen a handful of them busted on the news doesn't make it common, it just means you are yet another innumerate. How many people in power are there? Tens of thousands - celebrities, congress, their staffs, corporate officers, millionaires, etc. Add them all up and then compare them to the number of cases of pedos among them. Its no different, probably less in fact, than the ratio of pedos to non-pedos in the general population.
Its precisely your kind of stupid-ass logic, completely untethered from reality, that let idiots like the shooter convince themselves that pizzagate is real.
> "Fake" implies that the person who creates the "news" KNOWS it's fake.
So which of the people reporting on the weird Podesta email about the "pizza-related map" the realtor found and offered to return to Podesta believe the email doesn't exist? Which of the people who found the jimmycommet Instagram (now only available as archives...) believed the photos weren't creepy? Which of the people who saw the photo they tagged as #chickenlovers believes they didn't see that?
See, if you actually want to debunk this, these are the questions you have to answer. These are the claims you have to shoot down.
If you're just going to shout #fakenews! Conspiracy theory! And never touch the facts, well... it's only going to get worse.
Compare to 9/11 nonsense: there were actual explanations about how and why the towers collapsed.
If it wasn't incriminating, then why did they change it when it was exposed
A) If I found out I accidentally used a pedo logo, I'd change it too.
B) If I found out alt-right nutjobs were spreading shit around the internet about my shop, I'd get off my ass to change it because I don't want my customers or employees shot by fucking morons like you.
Seriously, you need to go see a shrink.
Someone had to do it.
I'm not going to knock Jon Stewart, he did an excellent job. But he was a comedian who was less of a joke than the rest of the news. That is what our problem is.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The repeated claims of Russian hackers regarding the DNC leaks would be an example. They even claimed that it had to be the Kremlin, when Podesta got hacked by a basic phishing scheme.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I see this morning Trump nominated a medical doctor who thinks dietary supplements can cure cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Good. The quicker Trump fucks up irrecoverably, the quicker he gets replaced. Won't be long now.
LOL, that's the funniest thing I have heard this MONTH. Trump is a reality show buffoon with absolutely no qualifications or experience for this job. Do you really think the people who saw this and voted for him anyway will suddenly realize what a horrible mistake they have made? People tend to rationalize their choices in politics rather than admitting a mistake. That is why Congress always has an abysmal approval rating as a whole but each district tends to rate their own representative highly. Every time Trump opens his mouth and says something stupid there are plenty of people that instantly go to bat for him and try to "explain" what he really meant. Whether it's complete ignorance of diplomatic relationships on his phone calls with Pakistan and Taiwan, telling Duterte that extrajudicial executions to deal with his drug problem is a great idea, or just grabbing women by the pussy, the people who voted for him instantly rationalize it in their brains as "being presidential" or "a tough new diplomatic tack" or "locker room talk". These are the people who shut the government down and prompted a downgrade of the US credit rating because they were throwing a fit about raising the debt ceiling and paying for the shit they already budgeted for. They did demonstrable damage to the finances of the country and their supporters voted them right back in.
You're delusional if you think Trump supporters will ever acknowledge a fuck-up. As Trump himself said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose voters".
Enigma
Listen to interviews with him back when he was a surgeon. He had that same slow, even mannerism, but spoke clearly about his profession. Either he's afflicted with some kind of dementia, or more likely, he's one of those people who's so focused on their field he doesn't know anything else, but so egotistical he thinks he knows everything.
Play Command HQ online
The exception, not the rule. Any more stupid questions?
How about the — completely bogus — meta-story of the "campus rape epidemic"? Which Jon Stewart and others have covered.
You go rape yourself now...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Of the more than 11,800 endangered runaways reported to NCMEC in 2015, one in five were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Of those, 74 percent were in the care of social services when they went missing. " ...absolutely damning statistic IMO...
Not really sure why that's damning. Social services generally only gets kids in the worst of circumstances, so almost all of the kids in the charge of social services will be messed up.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I never understood that. Whatever else Donald Trump may be, he definitely is establishment. You can't have any large real estate business without being in constant contact with local politicians. His whole economic message during the election was that he has the connections necessary to make Things[tm] work. So he is the establishment guy and insider, that will put an end to all those establishment guys and insiders, right?
That would only be relevant if there were a 50:50 ratio of black and white people. In fact your own link doesn't suggest what you are suggesting, it instead accepts that black people are more likely to get shot by cops and blames it on them being violent criminals.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Slashdot is a forum where the majority of users are IT professionals, our brains able to deal with some unbelievably complex problem solving that people outside of IT consider a type of magic. Most of us have been hailed as geniuses by our friends and family.
Stray outside of IT related issues however, and the comments here vary widely from occasionally insightful to completely idiotic. You know it. I know it. Everyone here knows it.
And it's not just us. From Thomas Edison to Richard Dawkins, remove them from their field(s) of expertise and they end up being advocates of really shitty ideas.
The point is Carson is intelligent in his field, but that doesn't make him qualified in anything else. I'm not saying it precludes him from being smart in other fields, but it explains why in many areas he's said some really dumb stuff.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
[1] The only way he can fuck up is if he ends up being just like Hillary or Obama.
Really? Is that REALLY the only way he can fuck up?
Disclaimer, I was not a Trump supporter, but I'm willing to give him a chance. But if you think being "more of the same" is the worst way he can fuck up I truly wonder how far your head is buried in the sand. What about wars, foreign relations, economy? As much as some people may not like it, the US does not exist in a vacuum. Things we do and say (and by "we" I mean our leadership) can have direct and severe consequences. What do you think is going to happen when the administration places a %50 tariff on Chinese made goods? Do you think our country is magically going to find the money to buy non-Chineese made goods, or come up with the extra cash to pay for them? Or worse, how is the world going to react when Mad Dog decides it's time to "finally do something" about North Korea or Afghanistan?
Yeah, I know, the likelihood of either of those happening is pretty slim, but WW3 is never not a possibility. And we just elected someone with zero political experience, and he's filling his cabinet with unstable and inexperienced people. Yeah, now that I think about it, Status Quo is definitely the worst thing that could happen.
Furthermore, I don't think we've ever a generation that was so hated by their parents, nor one that had to face roadblocks being placed in at every step of the way decades in advance.
Grandparents, not parents.
Millennials are large enough to challenge the political power of the Baby Boomers. The Boomers, having utterly dominated politics and been the focus of the vast majority of marketing for their entire lives, are not taking this transition well.
Normally each subsequent generation is larger than the previous, so the power transition is more gradual and less shocking to those being replaced. For example, GenX's political and social beliefs are between the Boomers and Millennials. But GenX is too small to displace the Boomers so the Boomers retained power.
The big gulf between the generation losing power and the generation gaining power has created a lot of acrimony, especially because the side losing power can't do anything about it. Their loss of power is as inevitable as death, mostly because death is the primary cause of it. So they rage, lash out, and abuse while they still can. But soon they won't have the influence to do so. And they know it.
Sure, but conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory keeps coming true. If 20 years ago you were rambling about government mind control experiments, the CIA letting crack into black neighborhoods and the government recording all your phone calls people would think you were crazy. All that stuff was true though.
Doesn't mean this is true, of course. But I just think we're kind of past the point where one can say "lol conspiracy theory" and have that be an argument.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
So which of the people reporting on the weird Podesta email about the "pizza-related map" the realtor found and offered to return to Podesta believe the email doesn't exist?
The "fake" here is:
Which of the people who found the jimmycommet Instagram (now only available as archives...) believed the photos weren't creepy?
The fake here is the "creepy" was created by the conspiracy: The pictures of children enjoying pizza are creepy because of the pedophilia claims. ...Unless you want to claim Chuck-E-Cheese's entire marketing for the past several decades is creepy.
Which of the people who saw the photo they tagged as #chickenlovers believes they didn't see that?
And which of the people who saw they photo actually have any relevant information about said photo?
This entire "scandal" is an updated version of the McMartin preschool hysteria.
Literally none of the story is true.
So you bought that fake news narrative without checking?
Not only did the whole thing start as an online hoax by pranksters
How do you know that? Some things are pranks, some things are conspiracy theories (that may even have some truth behind them).
but the images in the supposed Instagram are from people who "liked" the pizza restaurant's page
Here's where you are dead wrong. Some of the images are from associations, but some very creepy ones involving children were found directly on the owner's Instagram account, "jimmycomet", including the young girl taped to the ping pong table with a male standing suggestively behind her. Ha ha, very funny?
None of the "FBI charts of code words" are from the FBI.
But the symbols are.
None of the information that the #pizzagate morons point to is true. It is 100% false.
Maybe if you weren't reading "fake news" and did some checking, you wouldn't be saying this. I haven't even gotten into the kind of art that Tony Podesta (John Podesta's brother) had at his home, which is documented by mainstream sources.
Here is a comprehensive, detailed rundown with citations on the history of this hoax and whether a single fact or assertion about pizzagate has been proven true or is possible to be proven true:
http://www.snopes.com/pizzagat...
And here's an archive version of the summary Snopes is "debunking". It also has citations, with archives of pages that have since been made private, deleted, or changed.
See, if you actually want to debunk this, these are the questions you have to answer. These are the claims you have to shoot down.
WTF? I was mildly interested in this story and looked at the facts. None of the "facts" lead to anything terribly interesting. I am reminded of the (supposed?) words of Cardinal Richelieu: If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
It is up to YOU to provide proof that YOUR interpretation of the facts is real. There are no facts like actual children disappearing or reporting things to the police. There are no facts like pictures of people doing bad things to children. There are no facts at all that directly support this theory in any way. It is all grasping at possible interpretations and running with them. Until YOU can show that YOUR interpretation has something real behind it, this is a fake news story.
No wonder you are anonymous.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen