Fake News: The ‘Post-Truth’ Pact
Pledging to Help Reverse America’s Fact-Free Trend
Come, now. Don’t act so surprised. You didn’t really think it was going to be free, did you? You didn’t believe the extraordinary privilege of being alive and plugged in during the digital era would come without a cost — that having a handy portal to the sum of all human knowledge in your jeans pocket would be devoid of downsides.
You know how this works: Just as puppy kisses are edged with needle teeth and peanut-butter cheesecake brownies require a penance of kale and burpees, all exquisite things demand something unpleasant in return.
So in the wake of a heinous election that may very well have been won by the viral spread of fake news articles — and insomuch as Oxford Dictionaries just named “post-truth” the 2016 Word of the Year — it’s payback time. Ye Pitiless Gods of Ubiquitous Information and Pervasive Propaganda have come to collect their debt. Their pound of flesh. Their click-bait kickback.
