Michael J Fox hasn’t been arrested for insider trading

There is plenty of fake news masquerading as “satire” out there that isn’t really satire so much as it is just news that isn’t real, designed purely to trick readers into believing it.

The story by StubhillNews.com (released just in time for Back to the Future Day) about Michael J. Fox being arrested for insider trading is certainly NOT an example of that. It was an obvious satirical story. Really, as obvious as you can get. It was an article clearly designed to poke fun at the plot of Back to the Future II , that saw Marty want to take a sports statistics book from the future back to the present day to make some money at the bookies, only for Biff to do it instead.

Yet, oddly, the story has still fooled many into thinking that Michael J. Fox has really been arrested. But why? Surely an article that contains quotes from ‘NASA astrophysicist Barry Manilow’ and mentions the ‘FBI TimeCrime division’ from a website with the tagline “If you think Stubhill News is real news, you’re going to have a bad time.” could not possibly be misinterpreted as genuine?

Well it has, but before we start chastising people for being overly gullible, there are a number of reasons why such a story could end up being spread by people thinking it’s actually true.

Firstly, people only read a headline. We know first-hand that many people will glance at a headline and that seems to provide sufficient motivation to both believe and share a story, without so much as reading past the first paragraph, let alone spending any time critically evaluating the story. The chances are that many people sharing the story as genuine didn’t even get to the part about Barry Manilow, not that this is any kind of excuse.

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The second reason is hearsay. If a particular story garners so much attention online – which the StubhillNews satirical article did – the satirical element of the story – on some cases – gets lost in translation as people hear “on the online grapevine” that such a story may be true, question the story themselves, and it passes from person to person, eventually gaining more credibility, despite no one really taking the time to evaluate any source.

Combine this with a third reason – that people may not be familiar with the Back to the Future movies (which isn’t entirely out of the question) and voila, you have a blatant satirical article being mistaken by many as genuine.

Another reason to ensure that you verify the veracity of the information you pass on online. Sharing this one as true would really leave you feeling a little red-faced!