Truth and fiction are indistinguishable on social media. The medium itself encourages this. Falsehood is built-in and inseparable. Of course "journalists" some

Truth and fiction are indistinguishable on social media. The medium itself encourages this. Falsehood is built-in and inseparable. Of course "journalists" sometimes spread "stories" based on random social media posts. What is really interesting is that the posts were there first, and the internet amplifies them on its own. To any reader who's not in on it, the original comment about the Roku crashes sounds plausible enough by itself. It is then upvoted organically to a broader audience. The author didn't write misinformation for ad views, sponsorships, or even Reddit karma. He just released it for his own pleasure, as an "obvious" joke. Millions of similarly motivated posts are being blasted out every minute, with content such as: memes with humorous but false descriptions of the content, selfies painting false pictures of people's lives, anecdotes with implied messages, creative writing of what-if scenarios or "head canon", compelling but baseless theories about complex topics, true statements cherry-picked to make false points, etc. These are created not for sales, propaganda, or even internet points, but simply to share half-formed idle thoughts. That is: jokes, guesses, hot takes, wishful fantasy. It may be obvious bullshit to the authors, but the medium presents it all as fact. None of us are capable of passing careful judgement on the sheer volume of content, so most is absorbed at face value. This environment is also a fertile breeding ground for deliberate, malicious misinformation, but that's beside the point. Ultimately, the only solutions are to stop consuming social media altogether, or accept that falsehood is now inseparable from actual facts.