If fake news simply deceived, or if the glut of information only harmlessly distracted, that would be one thing. The problem with unreality and pseudo-events is not simply that they are unreal; it is that they don’t stay unreal. While they may themselves exist in some netherworld between real and fake, the domain in which they are consumed and acted on is undoubtedly real. In being reported, these counterfeit events are laundered and passed to the public as clean bills—to buy real things. The anxiety of the media becomes the anxiety of the world, and it becomes the weakness by which the
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