Fake News

“You should always tell the truth no matter what.”

I’m sure all of us have heard that many times throughout our lives. So why do people still lie or tell bullshit stories?

It’s because they know that we will almost always believe them. This is especially true when the lie or bullshit is being told on social media. Frankfurt explains in Truth, Lies, and Bullshit that our inability to reasonably discriminate makes it hard to navigate our way through the many lies we see. We have trained ourselves to believe everything that we see on social media and fail to recognize when we are being lied or bullshitted too.

When basketball icon Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash, many news outlets decided to take advantage of this incident by reporting that Rick Fox, former basketball player and current actor, had passed away. But Rick Fox was nowhere near the accident and was actually alive. It was an attempt by news outlets to increase ratings by reporting something that wasn’t true. In fact, Rick Fox’s own family believed the news that he was dead and went through all the emotions before finding out that he was still alive. Rick Fox later scolded the media for making his family go through something so traumatic. But was it entirely the media’s fault?

We have given news outlets the ability to lie and bullshit their way into making money because we are prone to believing everything we see. And they know it too. It’s why they were able to report that Rick Fox had died in the helicopter accident when he wasn’t even in the same city as the accident. His own family believed the news because they are just like the rest of us. They too believe everything they see on social media.

Frankfurt also describes a bullshitter as someone who doesn’t care about what the truth is. They only care about what benefits them. News outlets are the perfect example of a bullshitter. They report stories that may or may not be true but as long as it increases their ratings and money keeps flowing in, they will keep reporting it. Do you think the news outlets reporting Rick Fox’s death cared about what his family would go through? The answer is an emphatic NO. But it is our fault for letting them take advantage of us.