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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."
The pizzagate psychos are now being told this was clearly a 'false flag' operation to cover up and discredit a world wide pedophile ring... running out of a fucking pizza place.
Jesus wept, this country is doomed.
No one on Slashdot would ever promote right wing conspiracy theories! How absurd...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.
The son of Trump's likely National Security Advisor is one of those gullible simpletons
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The guy showing up at a pizza restaurant with a gun to "investigate it" is a retard, but this case is yet another entry in the list of things that has been bugging me about the "fake news" thing.
Why are we calling this "fake" news instead of "incorrect news" or "wrong news" or "wacko conspiracy theory"? My guess is that deep down, the people that are pushing back against what they call "fake" news doesn't care about truth or falsehood, only the messenger.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It's almost as bad of a conspiracy theory as the US Govt claiming the Russians were behind the Podesta leaks. Just make up evidence!
Any nutbar who would like to go to Russia to "self investigate" the Kremlin at gunpoint has my full support
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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?
"Psst, kid, wanna try Linux? It's free..."
Table-ized A.I.
Fake news refers to some website that superficially appear to be a real news site such as a news paper to give them legitimacy. These "news" sites may only have one story, but they have a the gloss of a real news source. So they are more insidious than some typical deranged paranoid manifesto posted to redit.
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.
Yeah, I never really saw this reported as "news" anywhere (not that it wasn't eventually picked up on several blog sites). This was more of a discussion board/twitter "investigation." I never really gave it much credibility, but when all the MSM sites start yelling "fake news" in unison, it does peak my curiosity. It's not like pedophile scandals are that rare among people in power.
It might be inaccurate news, but I have no doubt that the people looking into this believe its real.
Read the story: "According to police, the suspect entered the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in DC around 3pm and pointed the firearm at an employee. He then discharged it without anybody getting hurt. Witnesses said restaurant patrons scattered from the venue."
reagan trashed the mental health system. kept too many republican voters locked up.
"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.
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
Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Asshole's an idiot, I'd rather he be in prison than in the general population.
The problem is that Jon Stewart was literally the most trusted name in news despite being a comedic take on current events. If that's the best the fourth estate has, of course democracy is going to fail.
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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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Who happened to walk into a business and shoot because he was goaded on by GOP propaganda spread not just by random trolls, but party leaders. The Republican party has a real mess on its hands. This will not end well.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
People should be able to seek a diagnosis for mental illness without stigma, and get treatment if they need it.
They already do, depending on the "diagnosis". It seems like having aspergers, ADHD, or being on some part of the spectrum is almost a badge of honor in some circles, especially in tech:
http://nymag.com/news/features...
And just think about the amount of people getting prescribed Xanax, Prozac, or Adderall nowadays.....seems like people are getting what they want (whether or not this is "treatment", or course, is debatable).
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 itc
Hogwash. She was fairly well-off financially, and it's been said that what set him off was that his mother had finally decided to have him committed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Although the details behind that were somewhat speculative, he was at the very least seeing a psychiatrist, one that was in the news recently with his own set of problems:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
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.
Maybe. But you need to be careful of what you're asking for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
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.
Far left for a long time, really? It's not like we have elected anyone that really believes in socialist concepts, like Bernie does.
Last 5 presidents:
- Reagan (right wing Republican)
- Bush I (centrist Republican)
- Clinton (centrist Democrat)
- Bush II (right wing Republcan)
- Obama (elected as slightly left of center but wound up pretty close to Clinton if not a bit to the right of him)
- Trump (who the fuck knows but he sure isn't a lefty)
You could fix FIX DISHONESTY IN GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA by at least pretending to support a candidate that doesn't slander and lie at the drop of a hat.
Fake "news show" not "fake news" show.
Good lord, man. Take 30 seconds to think before you write something.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
What we consider "left" is somewhere between centrist and moderate right in the rest of the first world.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Funny, we were discussing mental illness and the "9/11 was faked" guy turns up - well timed!
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
https://goo.gl/maps/Lvj4ec9pE9...
It's not actually as exciting as it sounds.
I'm calling BS on this.
First, no military in the world issues AR-15 rifles as standard equipment. The AR-15 design was the basis for the M-16, M-4, and other rifles but the AR-15 as available to the civilian population is far from common in any military.
Second, an "assault rifle" is a class of weapon that is capable of burst and/or fully automatic fire. There are some true assault rifles in private possession in the USA but the people that own them would not carry them into a pizzeria to put holes in their walls. To own such a weapon one would have to pass a stringent background check, pay considerable fees in lawyers and taxes, and be required to keep it under close guard.
Third, anyone that has had an actual drill sergeant would know how to spell "sergeant".
Fourth, a drill sergeant would never call such a weapon an "assault rifle". It would be called a "rifle" or "weapon". No one in the military would bother to expend the effort in calling such things an "assault rifle" in common conversation. That term would only be used to differentiate such a weapon from a sniper rifle, machine gun, carbine, sidearm, mortar, tank, or other weapon if there was some reason one might be confused. Even then the "M" designation would likely be preferred, as in calling it a "M-16" or "M-4".
If you were in fact in the military then I suspect that you were tossed out with a BCD. Probably from calling your weapon an "assault rifle" in front of your drill sergeant one too many times.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
doesn't the hard-working small business owner, who is now getting death threats and business disruptions, have a really good libel case?
> 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.
Does this mean you are willing to accept responsibility on behalf of Dem propaganda for the 2010 shooting at the Family Research Council where a guy walked into a business with a gun, bag full of chick-fil-a and a list of 'hate groups' from the SPLC and shot someone?
No?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
There are bullshit narratives used against Trump, although it's easy for them to get lost in the media covering everything he tweets. One bizarre claim was that 'drain the swamp' was racist.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
fake (news show)
NOT a
(fake news) show
Big difference.
If this guy had been black, the pizza parlor would have been nuked from space.
Useful tip: You're more likely to be shot by police if you're white while carrying a weapon. It's in all the crime stats you'd care to look at. Don't let that fake media narrative get you down.
Om, nomnomnom...
The exception, not the rule. Any more stupid questions?
Good, point, but unfortunately, you're Mashiki. So, based on previous actions the link is:
* 65% probability: doesn't say what you claim
* 25% probability: from some very dubious site that also doesn't say what you claim
* > 9.9% probability: a broken link
* < 0.1% probability: actually backs up your claim. Note that 0.1% is an upper bound. We don't have any past data in this category.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Also, the cure for cancer is at least in part based on the Hunza mountain people who live an average of 120 plus years and do not get cancer.
The longest ever documented lifespan of a human being was that of Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 being 122 years old. She was no Hunza, but a french woman from Arles. Most other persons being named as the oldest person currently living die between 114 and 117 years old.
I thus seriously doubt any information about people getting older than 120 years on average. You need a very strong proof for that claim.
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
I'm a conservative and strong supporter of the 2nd amendment, but can we please let that bogus list die. It's false example
Nidal Hassan, No political registration in either Texas or his prior state of residency Virginia, because neither requires registering as a member of a particular party.
Seung-Hui Cho, resident alien with no voting rights. As such he never registered to vote, party affiliation not known.
That's just a couple examples off the top of my head. The list you pulled these from was debunked years ago. Nutjobs come from both sides of the political spectrum.
The great Hunza secret to old age turned out to be its absence of birth records. The illiterate elders didn't know how old they were, and they tended to overestimate their ages by a decade or two, as I discovered by comparing their recollections with known historical events.
Read yourself: The Optimists Are Right.
Violent crime is down significantly from the 1970s. How does that jive with your theory?
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. - B.F. Skinner
Have you read the stickied list of so-called "proof" at the Voat Pizzagate page?
Sentences deliberately taken out of context, obvious office in-jokes, tons of dad humor that I recognize from all the places I've worked.
People are reading a hell of a lot more into this than it warrants. E-mail correspondence taken out of context can be interpreted in a lot of ways, especially if it was related to conversations, text messages or chats that happened beforehand. People are only seeing maybe only the 20% of the correspondence that was written down, and they're interpolating wildly to match their agenda.
Eat the rich.
If anyone is trying to revise history, it's you.
Yes it was Reagan.
No, it wasnt a democratic congress.
No, the democrats in congress at that time could not be considered progressive (much as you like to use the word as an invective).
Deinstitutionalization began in California, just before Reagan became governor. It was a response to a set of legitimate problems, originally as a concept of trying to get patients into more local care, with less federal and state funding. But that didnt happen, patients instead began ending up on the streets or in privately run (for profit) facilities.
And then Reagan as governor continued it, expanded it, oversaw the increasing privatization of it, and got paid by the people who profited off of the privatization.
At the national level, Carter and the Congress (the one you mistakenly say was to blame...) crafted a law, just before Reagan became president, to roll back deinstitutionalization, and provide federal funding to be gin getting a handle on the growing problem.
and Reagan along with a Republican controlled Congress killed the law as soon as he became president.
From American Psychosis:
In November 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly defeated Jimmy Carter, who received less than 42% of the popular vote, for president. Republicans took control of the Senate (53 to 46), the first time they had dominated either chamber since 1954. Although the House remained under Democratic control (243 to 192), their margin was actually much slimmer, because many southern “boll weevil” Democrats voted with the Republicans.
One month prior to the election, President Carter had signed the Mental Health Systems Act, which had proposed to continue the federal community mental health centers program , although with some additional state involvement. Consistent with the report of the Carter Commission, the act also included a provision for federal grants “for projects for the prevention of mental illness and the promotion of positive mental health,” an indication of how little learning had taken place among the Carter Commission members and professionals at NIMH. With President Reagan and the Republicans taking over, the Mental Health Systems Act was discarded before the ink had dried and the CMHC funds were simply block granted to the states. The CMHC program had not only died but been buried as well. An autopsy could have listed the cause of death as naiveté complicated by grandiosity.
President Reagan never understood mental illness. Like Richard Nixon, he was a product of the Southern California culture that associated psychiatry with Communism. Two months after taking office, Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, a young man with untreated schizophrenia. Two years later, Reagan called Dr. Roger Peele, then director of St. Elizabeths Hospital, where Hinckley was being treated, and tried to arrange to meet with Hinckley, so that Reagan could forgive him. Peele tactfully told the president that this was not a good idea. Reagan was also exposed to the consequences of untreated mental illness through the two sons of Roy Miller, his personal tax advisor. Both sons developed schizophrenia; one committed suicide in 1981, and the other killed his mother in 1983. Despite such personal exposure, Reagan never exhibited any interest in the need for research or better treatment for serious mental illness.
[..]
California has traditionally been on the cutting edge of American cultural developments, with Anaheim and Modesto experiencing changes before Atlanta and Moline. This was also true in the exodus of patients from state psychiatric hospitals. Beginning in the late 1950s, California became the national leader in aggressively moving patients from state hospitals to nursing homes and board-and-care homes, known in other states by names such as group homes, boarding homes
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
it's an open carry state, holster or sling up and stop by for pizza
WTF? First DC is NOT a state; second, DC does NOT allow open carry. Here's your cheat sheet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Most gun violence is perpetrated by low income people living in high crime areas. The people in those particular high crime areas tend to vote overwhelmingly Democrat (when they do vote).
Liberal news media outlets only care about gun violence when people outside of that demographic are involved. They usually focus on weapons that only account for a tiny minority of gun mayhem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
I read the linked article and it doesn't back up what you claim at all.
I know this is completely untenable, but there should a license to get online.
There should be training, perhaps like going through drivers ed or hunters ed, to get a license to get on the internet.
These dipshits, these FB idiots who believe every bizarre and completely unverified story or anecdote they see online should not have the ability to even be there in the first place.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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.
So are you agreeing Pizzagate is not fake news? It's a conspiracy theory. Nobody just made it up. They found weird emails with weird statements that no one would make that look like some kind of code and weird social media accounts with weird stuff posted to them. And nobody's bothered to explain "oh...this is what a pizza-related map handkerchief is, don't you feel silly now?" Or explain how one...I can't remember what it was "plays dominoes better on pizza or pasta" or whatever that weird message was.
I'm not saying it's true. I doubt it...it's probably confirmation bias. But screaming "fake news!!!" isn't going to make it stop. Someone needs to offer an alternative explanation to the weird language and debunk the conspiracy theory. When people think they saw a UFO the g-man needs to explain that no, it was swamp gas reflecting off a weather balloon or whatever. You can't just stand there saying "nothing to see here move along."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Is the mass media responsible for fabricating stories and inciting riots? Seems to me the media routinely fans the flames of racial division by releasing false information.
Remember the Charlotte riots? The media first reported that Keith Scott was unarmed. This was a major factor that led to the riots. Turns out, Keith Scott was armed. Is this a case of media fabrications causing riots?
In the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, the media first reported that Brown was on his knees with his hands up. Turns out, that was another media fabrication which also led to riots.
In the Ahmed Mohamed clock incident, the media first reported that Ahmed was just building a clock, as a project for his electronics class, but the principal called the police because Ahmed was a Muslim. Turns out, that was another media fabrication. Ahmed used a clock that he bought at a department store, along with a briefcase and other props, to make a fake bomb. In a post-Columbine world, what should the principal have done? What if it had been a bomb? BTW: although he was richly rewarded for this stunt, Ahmed has been posting extremely anti-American rants: he called the 9/11 attacks self defence, he supports BLM, and much more.
When George Michael Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, the media first posted photos of an 11 year old Trayvon. Months after the incident, some people still believed that Zimmerman attacked a small child, which was not the case. Trayvon was an athletic 5'11" and 160 lbs. and was beating the snot out of Zimmerman. Maybe Zimmerman was not justified in shooting Trayvon, but Trayvon was not an 11 year child, and the media tried to insinuate.
there are good reasons someone can change their mind, but to do so and claim you haven't is wrong).
If I learned anything from the Bush-Kerry election, it's that to change your mind for any reason, even a good one, is also wrong.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
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