This 'Conservative News Site' Trended on Facebook, Showed Up on Fox News—and Duped the World

[DonViejo]

How do Marco Chacon’s fake articles and ‘leaked memos’—which parody the craziest alt-right conspiracies—keep fooling the conservative press and Trump’s followers?

BEN COLLINS

10.28.16 1:15 AM ET

Marco Chacon had only spent about $20 on his conservative news website, RealTrueNews, when he heard his words in prime time on Fox News’ The Kelly File. “Yeah,” Chacon said. “That was an accident.”

Just as he’d done for the last few months, Chacon had read the latest explosive conservative news—this time it was Hillary Clinton’s leaked speeches to Wall Street banks—and typed up an imagined transcript of his own.

“So in the transcript, she’s explaining Bronies to the Goldman Sachs board of directors,” said Chacon. “Do you know what Bronies are?” Bronies are hard-core, usually adult fans of the cartoon My Little Pony.

“In this one, (Bronies) are part of a threat of subalterns who are going to take over the election. And people believe all this,” he said. “And I’m just… I’m telling people, ‘How can you believe this!?’”

Somewhere in the middle of that block of text about My Little Pony, Chacon’s transcript contained the phrase “bucket of losers,” attributed, falsely of course, to Clinton, which legitimate conservative news websites picked up as real.

Sure enough, by 9 p.m. that day, Trace Gallagher was on Fox News telling viewers that Clinton had “apparently called Bernie Sanders supporters a ‘bucket of losers.’” (Megyn Kelly later apologized after the Clinton campaign vehemently denied Clinton said it.)

-snip-

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/28/the-man-who-duped-trumpkins-fox-news.html

[underpants]

1. Reminds me of c-league clickbait right wing sites on FB

People post that crap all the time.

[Roland99]

5. omg. The Wordpress sites being passed off as news by people on FB anymore

It's not just a disdain of intellectualism. It's a total disregard of thinking at all!!

[Coyotl]

2. "the most ludicrous right-wing conspiracy theories he could think of, give them a narrative and ....

"... the most ludicrous right-wing conspiracy theories he could think of, give them a narrative and timeline, and put them into quasi-official looking documents...."

WARNING: SOROS VOTING MACHINES SET TO *KILL

[NewJeffCT]

3. that's funny

I know a Bernie supporter who posted the "bucket of loser" comment on Facebook like it was fact as well.

[Wounded Bear]

4. Not surprising...

It took them several years to realize that Stephen Colbert was spoofing them and wasn't really a RW shill.

[padfun]

6. Yep. a RW co-worker thought he was the Jon Stewart for Conservatives

I never told him differently and he found out right about the time Jon was retiring.

[progressoid]

10. Yeah, I knew an older lady who was sad because she "couldn't stay up to watch that new fellow on TV"

She eventually figured it out that he was making fun of one of her idols, Billo.

[Jerry442]

7. You know, this could be the way we take down the right-wing media.

They're always broadcasting bullshit. What if we flood the channels with outrageous bullshit that any normal person could see at a glance is wildly implausible. The Kool-Aid drinkers will swallow so much of the fake bullshit*, they'll explode.



* No, I'm not really clear on what distinguishes fake bullshit from real bullshit.

[world wide wally]

8. This is what Alex Jones already does. ^

[drm604]

9. The real kind actually comes from bulls.