Politifact's Truth-O-Meter

Fake news is a plague on humanity, and here's another example. As I was tweet surfing today I came across a post by "Neil" that included a screenshot of a Craigslist ad for "Actors Needed June 20 (Tulsa)."

I'll cut to the chase and tell you now that the ad was a hoax.

I might not have thought twice about it had Neil not included the hashtags "TrumpRally" and "TulsaTrumpRally." This set off alarm bells for me.

Is Neil a gullible fool, too lazy to search Google for "actors needed June 20," and completely lacking critical thinking skills? Maybe. Or is Neil simply a liar, happy to pass on disinformation? And what about the 111 idiots who liked his tweet, and the 76 morons who retweeted it?

This fake ad was debunked at least five days ago. On June 15, Politifact reported it as a fake Facebook post. Here's an excerpt from the Politifact article:

The ad doesn’t mention Trump, but it includes a map marking the BOK Center in Tulsa, where the rally will be held. 

"Trump is beneath contempt," the Facebook post says.

What's really "beneath contempt" is (a) the persons who put that fake ad up and (b) the imbecile who posted it to Facebook without taking 90 seconds to search for it on Google or some other search engine.

Politifact said the post "was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)" The ad has been flagged for removed from Craigslist but Politifact has a link to an archive of the original.

PolitiZoom also debunked the hoax ad on June 15. FactCheck.org and USA Today both debunked it on June 19.

Unfortunately, a general search on Google for "Actors Needed June 20" still pulls up blog posts that repeat the lie of the hoax Craigslist ad.

Also unfortunate: Hundreds of thousands of morons will never read any of the debunking articles, and will continue to repeat the lie.