The Facts of Life: fake news and a pizzeria

A Washington restaurant is reeling from menacing calls and online abuse after a fake story: that Hillary Clinton abuses children there.

Source: This Pizzeria Is Not a Child-Trafficking Site – The New York Times

Can fake news get even more deadly?

Apparently.

WASHINGTON — Days before the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of a local pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong, noticed an unusual spike in the number of his Instagram followers.

Within hours, menacing messages like “we’re on to you” began appearing in his Instagram feed. In the ensuing days, hundreds of death threats — one read “I will kill you personally” — started arriving via texts, Facebook and Twitter. All of them alleged something that made Mr. Alefantis’s jaw drop: that Comet Ping Pong was the home base of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John D. Podesta.

When Mr. Alefantis discovered that his employees were getting similar abusive messages, he looked online to unravel the accusations. He found dozens of made-up articles about Mrs. Clinton kidnapping, molesting and trafficking children in the restaurant’s back rooms. The articles appeared on Facebook and on websites such as The New Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen, with one headline blaring: “Pizzagate: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington’s Occult Elite.”

None of it was true. While Mr. Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news.

Here’s what I–one of those despised liberal elites–want to know: how can you non-liberal-non-elites believe this shit? I’m long past the point of blaming it all on the bizarre stories out there. If you didn’t hand your brains over to them for brainwashing, they’d go out of business. Fast.

And how much longer do you intend to keep the faith, while screaming that people like me don’t pay enough attention to your problems?

I’m paying attention. Which is, presumably, why you’re joining up with these sickos who are buying your brains and your votes.

I’m paying attention. And I’m blaming you for being so ignorant and/or crazy to permit this garbage to work on you.

And don’t deny it: you voted based on it.

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