http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/03/27/ ... -are-dumb/
This may seem pretty unbelievable to most of you out there who are in possession of a fully functioning brain, but to many people on Facebook and Twitter, a recent story by the satire publication The Onion was taken so seriously it hurts.
In case America didn’t have a hard enough time not looking stupid to the rest of the world, websites like Facebook allow Americans to put their ignorance on full display and without shame. After The Onion published an article with an image that showed people on the wings of Air Force One as it flies through the sky. The headline read:
“Hundreds Of Cuban Refugees Clinging To Air Force One On Flight Back To U.S.”
Now, the picture may have confused even the most intelligent people at first, however, the headline clearly gives it away as satire. Who could possibly believe a story like that?!
Turns out that so many people in the internet were buzzing about the article that snopes.com had to cover the story to ensure that people did not actually believe that, not only were hundreds of people allowed on the airport tarmac, but that the President of the United States actually ordered takeoff with people clutching to the aircraft.
What a sad that of being when so many adult people can’t tell the difference between highly unbelievable satire and reality. Snopes said this:
“On 23 March 2016, the humor web site The Onion published the photograph and headline shown above, reporting that hundreds of Cuban citizens had clung to the outside of President Obama’s plane as it departed from Havana in an attempt to flee their country. Although most social media users are familiar with The Onion (and its genuinely satirical nature), multiple e-mails we received from readers and other social media posts indicated that not everyone got the joke.
Social media users have often unwittingly shared fake news articles published by web sites that exist solely to traffic in outlandish false stories, but The Onion began in the pre-Internet days as a printed humor publication and evolved to become the premier online satirical web site (i.e., a site that aims to make readers laugh, not to be fooled).
Despite its long tenure as a humor site, The Onion is still mistaken for a real news outlet on occasion. Before fake news sites invaded social media with their ubiquitous fabricated tales, users mistaking The Onion for real news inspired a popular blog that captured such errors.
The Onion’s item about Cuban refugees clinging to Air Force One consisted of a photograph and headline with no content, as did a previous (and similarly confusing) share from the site holding that SeaWorld houses orcas in large plastic bags while cleaning their tanks. A previous Onion article about a SeaWorld show that was “Just Elephant Drowning in Large Tank of Water with No Explanation” prompted a number of social media users to object to the imaginary described practice, as did another item about a teen whose parents intended to euthanize her because she was only “capable of texting and rolling her eyes
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”
