Misinformation spreaders fall for obvious online pranks and get widely mocked

Evidence

A particularly dismal moment came when she fell for an online prank and shared a photo of a “doctor” who seemed to be questioning the vaccination drive. Only it turned out that the doctor she quoted was not a doctor, but rather a well-known male porn star dressed in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. The tweet revealing the prank (pulled off by The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein) was “liked” seventy-one thousand times. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 233

Categorization

• CANDY: A porn star in scrubs as a quoted ‘doctor’ is a memorable, retellable anecdote.
• SEED: A piece on how prank debunking (like Klippenstein’s) works as a debunking genre — its reach and limits versus earnest fact-checking.
• XREF: connects to: A misspelled fake celebrity account fooled thousands within minutes — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 737; Parody performances are routinely mistaken for sincere commitment to what they mock; Even misinformation experts fall for convincing fake news footage — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 45