We want you to be able to write, certainly. But in the 21st century, more of our communication is accomplished visually than verbally, so a good course in argument or thinking should include a healthy dose of training in making persuasive images.

Yesterday, someone posted an image to a facebook group in my little town that was pretty clearly fake news, but maybe not to everybody.

The actual image was the “Russia Released Over 500 Lions” image below. The image above I made myself on the same website that produced the original. If you’re in on the joke, it can be funny, but it would have had just enough plausibility two years ago to make a reader wonder, Or panic. Or get into their cars and beat it out of town.

The original gag was admittedly funny, but it was also a little bothersome because the person who posted it in no way indicated it was a joke.

I checked at Snopes.com (highly recommended when something seems suspicious) to see if this was a one-off.

Snopes.com told me something else:

Some versions of this image carried a watermark for Break Your Own News, a website that allows users to generate their own news headlines.

So, off I went to BreakYourOwnNews.com to see if I could track down the origin of this joke. This is what I found.

I quickly made a bit of frightening personal news about my beloved little dog, Shelby, half beagle, half dachshund, whom I had photographed one day when her eye was sleepy and she was sheltering beneath my desk.

I posted it as a Reply to the “Russia Releases Lions” image to demonstrate how easy it is to mimic legitimate news. And then I went too far.

I suggested to the person who had posted the Lions photo that it would be all too easy to fill his Facebook feed with fake news that could be very disturbing and create real havoc. That image was taken down by the group’s Admins shortly after, and the “Russians Release Lions” post was also taken down shortly after. So apparently somebody learned something from my admittedly annoying reprimand.

A second such episode circled around the same time about whether or not a frightened population should take, or trust, or flush, the ibuprofen they’d been taking to fend off COVID infection.

False Ibuprofen Rumor

WHY I CAN’T RECOMMEND THIS WEBSITE

The interface is VERY simple, but the download feature could be a big mistake.

I made my images by filling in the simple interface fields, uploading my picture, and taking a screenshot.

I DID NOT DOWNLOAD THE IMAGE TO MY DRIVE.
That seemed dangerous, required me to update my default browser, and was flagged by my anti-virus program as Malicious. 

That’s the other warning about Fake News: It can bite you in the ass.