Are You Feeling It Now, Mr. Krabs?

Be honest with me: you felt like this at least once during the election news cycle.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that this country's current political climate is full of news that's, shall we say, less than trustworthy. No, I'm not talking about CNN, or the "failing" New York Times, or even Breitbart. I'm talking about those disreputable articles your grandparents show you, proud that the "mainstream" media has finally accepted the fact that Hillary Clinton is a secret Russian spy.

Seems legit. 

With all of this information flying around, it's easy to feel like poor Mr. Krabs, surrounded by a mob complaining about the side effects of Pretty Patties. Since President Trump's first press conference, in which he labeled CNN's Jim Acosta "fake news" and refused to answer his questions, the term has exploded in use, especially in the president's numerous daily tweets. But where did the term come from, and why does the president use it so much? 

Political propaganda is nothing new; Roman emperor Octavian employed a disinformation campaign against his enemy Marc Antony, later changing his name to Augustus and spreading a youthful, vivacious image of himself throughout the empire into his old age. It also has a rich history in American politics; during the election of 1828, Andrew Jackson famously started a rumor that his opponent, John Quincy Adams, had procured an American girl to service the sexual appetites of the Tsar of Russia. The difference between this century's news media and that in the past is obvious, the Internet allows social media users to exchange information like never before, including to an especially gullible audience. Now, I'm not insulting anyone's intelligence here, merely stating that it's easier to confirm people's biases than it's ever been: 62% of Americans use social media as their primary source of news, with 44% of that being Facebook. 

I think this counts as a childhood rite of passage. 

Combined with technological ease of access to fake news sites, the 2016 election proved a fertile breeding ground for fake news stories in regards to the narrative backdrop. Of course, Donald Trump was a key ingredient; he frequently described himself as a political outsider, labeled Hillary Clinton as "crooked", and wanted to "drain the swamp" of Washington. Alongside all of that, he courted conspiracy theories like no other: claiming Ted Cruz's father helped assassinate JFK, Barack Obama hadn't been born in the U.S., and that climate change was a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese. With all of these outlandish statements flying around, it's not hard to see how someone politically uninformed could believe an insane headline like "Hillary sold weapons to ISIS." 

Many critics have blamed the rise of the "filter bubble", a phenomenon showing social media users what they like and tend to agree with, and hiding things they don't. Critics claim that this distorts a neutral media playing field, as stories with outlandish headlines will obviously get clicked on the most. It's not hard to see this working in practice; after all, a hardcore liberal probably isn't going to retweet Fox News left and right. Facebook and Twitter even have algorithms that calculate the content you're likely to see on your pages, the same way search engines like Google will save your shopping history and throw ads at you while you're trying to do homework. 

Facebook and Twitter have already vowed to fight this rising tide of fake news since the election, cracking down on fake news sites spreading misinformation, but in this digital age, it's hard to suppress any kind of information for long. Until then, we'll just have to take a page out of Mr. Krabs' book, and let all of the rumors and conspiracies spiral around us without getting too close.