This really reminds me of the game Telephone. Someone whispers a message to the person on their right, who whispers it to the person their right until the circl

This really reminds me of the game Telephone. Someone whispers a message to the person on their right, who whispers it to the person their right until the circle is closed and the last person whispers the message back to the original sender. Usually, the returning message sounds very different than what the sender sent. What we're really seeing is the distortion effect the further any statement gets from its source. Someone misunderstands a concept, doesn't understand an idiom used in the statement, or tries to interpret what is being said into their own lens. End result being the statement gets changed from the original. The further the statement goes the higher percentage chance of the telephone effect kicking in. One could probably do a study, for instance, of game console releases and see the same effect taking place. The first level rumor might be "Look at this cool Xbox809090 faceplate from the factory in China!!" and the tertiary article published in a mainline news article might read "New XBOX Set to shoot lasers out of new faceplate!!!!". tl;dr The further a message gets from the originator, the higher the chances of it being altered.