How bullshit becomes mainstreamed

This piece outlines an event that would be really funny, were it not so common in the world of the partisan right and left-wing blogger/pundit worlds.

The line between journalism and gossip has blurred to such a degree, particularly among some brazenly partisan media outlets, that many people no longer even seem to care about fact-checking.  If the rumor sounds good (in other words, if it makes the "other side" look bad), they just run with it, no questions asked.

Generally, this wouldn't be such a big deal ... reasonable people reading it would probably get their bullshit detectors going and have suspicions about the story, then seek out the truth, discover that the story was, in fact, complete bullshit, and then never trust that media outlet again.

But that's not what happens for the extreme partisans who are locked in the partisan feedback loops (their "tribe") we see today.  What happens instead is that extreme partisans of the same persuasion as the author of the bullshit story will link to that story and pass it on to all of their friends.  People will create picture memes referencing the bullshit story and forward it all over facebook, and all of their like-minded partisan friends will "like" it, oblivious to the fact that they are liking something that has been proven to be complete bullshit.  Before long, the bullshit story is an ingrained part of the "knowledge" of many partisan people, and they will continue to repeat it as validation of their own faith-based beliefs that their side can do no wrong and the other side can do no right. 

The bullshit story will go from rumor, to "fact," to a part of the fabric of the legend of that partisan hackery ideology.

Anyone who steps in and points out to any of those people that what they are saying isn't true, and provides the evidence that it isn't true, will be dismissed and derided and mocked as being a mere naive pawn of the "other side," and the bona fide evidence presented will be disregarded because it was provided by a news source that wasn't part of their partisan feedback loop (in other words, it came from a news source that was too objective to be trusted, because they have been trained by the partisan puppetmasters to only trust their own partisan sources of information).

This is how the partisans on the left and the right are fed bullshit, and this is how they often end up swallowing that bullshit and even defending that bullshit, leaving them looking foolish to people outside of their partisan feedback loop, but (sadly) making them heroes within their partisan feedback loop.

And since they often place far more value in the what people inside their own partisan feedback loops think about them, and often almost take pride in being seen as foolish by those outside of their partisan feedback loops, the incentives are firmly in place to continue to create, distribute, and defend convenient bullshit.