Experts agree that the growth industries of today include gaming and healthcare and clean energy. Each has impressive potential upsides, with demand steadily increasing and the possibility of a singular player uprooting the usual way of doing business. The hard part is picking that winner among the myriad of contenders, the one that against all odds will establish not just a beachhead but an actual beach. And it's no different in perhaps the biggest growth industry of all, that of fake news.
Call it what you will: fake news, conspiracy theories, the crazies coming out to play. By whatever name the roster of provably false or misleading ideas is growing faster than ever. As of this writing the "winner" in the field revolves around the last election. Despite audit after audit, review after review, even those whose goal it was to find fault can't seem to do so. No matter: believers gonna believe. No amount of evidence will make a difference to those who say it was stolen. Forget a faked moon landing, or the JFK assassination, or Paul being dead. None of those holds a candle to this baby. If the Big Lie were a company, it would be Facebook, Google and Amazon all rolled into one, with a dash of Tesla on top for good measure.
After that the pickings get slim. That's not to say that there aren't adherents to each, one group more convinced of the veracity of their pet cause than the next. It's just that outside of a troubled few individuals the ideas haven't really taken hold. Most revolve around COVID in all of its facets. The virus is actually a manufactured bioweapon? Genetic sequencing proves it has a natural origin. Bill Gates is putting microchips in vaccines? A goodie, but it never really got legs. The metal nose piece in masks is really a 5G antenna? Nope, but on reflection it actually might improve your cell phone reception and could be a future business opportunity.
There are so many of these rising and falling that the Associated Press publishes a regular weekly roundup called "Not Real News." Recent entries include a claim that COVID test kits had predetermined "positive" and "negative" swabs. Seems some test kits do have those swabs for quality control, but they're for checking the test, not people. Another states that the Nuremberg Code says that mask mandates are a war crime. Sorry, nowhere is that or anything close found in the code. And the one about the UK government banning Fox News? It is indeed true that the channel is not broadcast in London, but that's because no one was watching: there was such low viewership that Murdoch's company took it off the air themselves.
That sampling barely scratches the surface. The vast majority of the rest are not only demonstrably false, but prima facie bonkers. There's one that an elite cohort of reptiles rule the earth, another that Finland doesn't exist. Some believe that the headquarters for the illuminati is located under the Denver Airport, or that those trails that come from airplanes are poisonous chemtrails. Then there's the QAnon sect in Dallas that's floated the idea that Keith Richards is really JFK. One hardly knows where to begin.
Or consider the audio clip that went viral on WhatsApp. It said that the Ministry of Defense in the UK, to help feed those that were housebound due to the pandemic, was using Wembley stadium to bake a giant lasagna. "They're putting on the underground heating at Wembley, that's going to bake the lasagna, and then they're going to put the roof across and that's going to recreate the oven, and then what they're going to do is lift it up with drones and cut off little portions and drop them into to people's houses." It circulated so widely that the Football Association, English soccer's governing body, was forced to confirm it did not plan on making dinner for all. Shame. Might have been tasty.
As for the rest, Paul was just on the Colbert show, and I've been to Helsinki, so I can personally debunk that one. As to the thing about 5G antennas in your mask? It certainly sounds like something Apple might do. I might just sign on to that one myself.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to filter out the obvious noise. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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