January 5, 2018

People believe what they want to believe.

And they wanted to believe that Trump insisted on watching "The Gorilla Channel" his White House television.



When informed that they fell for what was a satire, some insisted that it still counted against Trump, because things that are true about Trump made this seem plausible. Others chided the satirist for contributing to the fake news problem... and, indeed, the tweet would count as "fake news" within the Allcott/Gentzkow definition, which includes "many articles that originate on satirical websites but could be misunderstood as factual, especially when viewed in isolation on Twitter or Facebook feeds" and must therefore include satirical tweets that begin with no context at all.

48 comments:

Matt Sablan said...

When a satirical tweet is fake news, but a guy admitting he probably printed lies isn't, your definition of fake news is problematic.

liza moon said...

as you wade thru the wolff offering, how does it compare to the prank above?

and wasn't it kind of them to establish a tenet of the new definition of fake news?

Sprezzatura said...

Shoulda been an orangutan channel.

More clever angle. IMHO.

Fernandinande said...

The Gorilla Channel has been substituting chimps recently, using sets with small trees and furniture. I almost wish I hadn't subscribed.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Wait. People fell for a satire from a Twitter account called "The Gorilla Channel Is A Joke".

Chuck said...

I saw this story elsewhere, and it is still not clear to me who, exactly, "fell for it" as a genuine book excerpt.

Is there a handy link for that?

Althouse uses "they" for this post; who exactly is "they," who made the mistake? Is it an important story, if the number and position of the suckers involved is trivial?

tim in vermont said...

Wow, liberals sure fixate on people's coloration for some reason.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

I think it would be funny to spread similar stories about Trump, just to see if people bite. Believe it or not, he finds even NFL broadcasts too heavy or intellectual, and constantly demands that someone put Treehouse back on.

Matt Sablan said...

Bill: I think on Twitter you can't see the full name unless you click through. If it just pops up in your feed, it just says Pixilated Boat or whatever.

TwoAndAHalfCents said...

I can hardly wait to see my lefty friends go bananas over this new 'revelation.'

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I can't decide if I am amused that people think there is a Gorilla Channel and Trump is watching it obsessively......or if I am disappointed to find out that there ISN'T a Gorilla Channel.

It sound kind of fun to watch. Like the puppy bowl instead of the Super Bowl. Especially if there are baby gorillas. Come on. Admit it. You would watch.

n.n said...

Credible.

tim in vermont said...

Get your own blog for 'portant stuff, Chuck. I laughed and a tear came to my eye from laughing. You know what else was funny? When Trump posed as his own publicist.

Ray - SoCal said...

I believe Trump already does this!

>I think it would be funny to spread similar stories about Trump, just to see if people
>bite.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I would watch a gorilla channel.

Animal planet is mauling it over...

https://twitter.com/animalplanet/status/949384706285621248

Mary Beth said...

You would watch.

Do it for Harambe!

n.n said...

The Gorilla Channel may be an allusion to a Certain Network or Washington Press where simian derivatives are known to fling stuff.

Wince said...

Guerrilla Radio

Who gottem yo check the federal file
All you pen devils know the trial was vile
An army of pigs try to silence my style
Off 'em all out that box
It's my radio dial

Lights out
Guerrilla Radio... Turn that shit up

It has to start somewhere It has to start sometime
What better place than here, what better time than now?

All hell can't stop us now!

Matt Sablan said...

"I saw this story elsewhere, and it is still not clear to me who, exactly, "fell for it" as a genuine book excerpt."

-- Scott Dworkin for one. Toure thought it was a real excerpt, but thought it was one of the fake stories in the book.

Drago said...

Remember, LLR Chuck wanted a 15 yr old doxxed for daring to create a GIF as well as wanting to put the entire white house communications staff under oath about a simpke tweet.

Between all that, ice cream scoops, diet cokes and white trucks, there really isnt tome for anything else.

Drago said...

Who wouldn't want to watch a gorilla "Thunderdome" channel?

I wonder if the dems/LLR's will demand impeachment over this?

I'm guessing yes.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...


Chuck, I know you have a hard time believing that liberal reporters can be stupid, but here you go:

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/949318097315467264/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2F

Of course, now they are all saying "of course, I knew it was a joke!"

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

I think a Gorilla channel with fights would be pretty cool.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If gorillas are to gain their independence from human oppression, a channel would be a momentous beginning.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Of course I would have to turn it off as soon as the anti trump gorilla programming comes on.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Any truth to the rumor Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer are pinching the Gorilla Channel?

Rick said...

The Gorilla Channel Test: If enough people find it plausible that the president has spent multiple hours hunched in front of a television, shouting instructions to gorilla fight combatants, maybe it's time for a new president.

Or maybe it's time for new journalists.

tim in vermont said...

I miss the Russian collusion stories! What happened? I was reminded because sometimes I like to watch the Ancient Aliens series, and there is a line that they repeat, right before they go full whacko “Ancient Alien theorists suggest... and IF TRUE then....”

And all I can think is “Russian collusion theorist suggest... and IF TRUE!....”

tim in vermont said...

OMG! They found the egg the universe hatched from!

tcrosse said...

The Gorilla Channel Test: If enough people find it plausible that the president has spent multiple hours hunched in front of a television, shouting instructions to gorilla fight combatants, maybe it's time for a new president.

It won't be Hillary. Ever.

tim in vermont said...

We could use that “Gorilla Channel Test”! If somebody “finds it plausible” they are too stoopid to vote, and should be given a toy ballot to play with and sent to the corner with some crayons.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Instead of an Edward R Murrow Award for outstanding journalism, the Gorilla Channel will hand out Harambe awards for Heroism and Bravery.

Is this joke already taken?

Big Mike said...

The thing is, this should have fallen into one of the Allcott/Gentzkow categories of non-fake news: satire but everybody recognizes it as satirical. The trouble is, lefties will always believe anything negative about Trump, no matter how obviously it was meant as satire, so it falls under their definition of fake news.

Drago said...

The Gorilla Channel Test: If enough people find it plausible that the president has spent multiple hours hunched in front of a television, shouting instructions to gorilla fight combatants, maybe it's time for a new president.

If enough people find it plausible then we ought to expand our ability to incarcerate these lefties.

walter said...

Kinda funny..I stepped into pottery artist's studio before Christmas and he was working..tv in background. Guy was stocky, kinda stout and yes..kinda hairy on back of neck.
He looked at me and nodded in the direction of the tv showing gorillas and said "Watching my peeps".

William said...

Some people say thatTrump could get away with murder if he shot someone in the middle of the street, and other people would accuse him of murder if he said he said words to that effect.......You've got to take all these reports with a grain of sand. Sometime back there was a report on Fox News that President Clinton was getting bjs in the the Oval Office. Yeah, right. Just how gullible do they think the American public is.

Earnest Prole said...

This just in: people believe stupid shit.

Crimso said...

"must therefore include satirical tweets that begin with no context at all."

I dunno, there's "fake news" and then there's "bait." I suppose it can be both.

Birches said...

I saw this last night and laughed harder than I've laughed in awhile. Perfect satire.

Fyi, he changed his Twitter handle after people believed it.

traditionalguy said...

This is a true roll on the floor laughing tweet.That anyone took it seriously means that the last 20 years of drum beat of CIA Mockingbird psyops has dumbed down the young to dunce level.

Follow on Tweet showed a CNN studio breaking news with the banner: Justice Department confirms that Trump's indictment will be tried as an adult.

This is better than Trump's " Only Rosie O'Donneld " response the Me-again Kelly's hit piece.

TerriW said...

One time my mom was grumpy at my dad. She finally told him why: something he had done in her dream the night before.

He protested.

She said: "It's something you *would* do."

tim in vermont said...

MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump was momentarily speechless after he once asked him, “Can you read?” There was “awkward silence,” Scarborough wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Washington Post. Scarborough said the exchange occurred in a “tense meeting” he and his co-host Mika Brzezinski had with Trump after a debate in September 2015. “’I’m serious, Donald. Do you read?’ I continued. ‘If someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?’”

Yeah, Joe Scarborough worries that Trump is literally illiterate. But that’s because Trump! And the fact that Trump is in utter disbelief that he would even be asked this question proves he is hiding that he can’t read! Didn’t Joe know Trump reads Mein Kampf every night a little passage before going to sleep!

Newsweek...

Bilwick said...

To this day you could find people who'd swear they once heard Sarah Palin say "I can see Russia from my house." And why not? If you're gullible enough to swallow the toxic bouilliabaise of voodoo economics and State cultism that we call "liberalism," you're gullible enough to swallow anything.

Yancey Ward said...

Chuck wrote...
"I saw this story elsewhere, and it is still not clear to me who, exactly, "fell for it" as a genuine book excerpt."

Sounds like to me that Chuck fell for it, right?

Chuck said...

...
Sounds like to me that Chuck fell for it, right?

I did not. You could have asked me before jumping to that conclusion, but you didn’t.

Anyway; no, I did not fall for it. I never had the chance. I learned of the story as a fait accompli.

The Althouse gang seems to want to presume that a large body of anti-Trump ideologues were all hoodwinked by this story. The undercurrent being that their Trump hatred drove them to a silly presumption/acceptance of a parody as fact.

But it seems to me that the entire thing took place in an inconsequential little backwater of Twitter. And that the number (and nature) of the people who were fooled is likewise inconsequential.

Night Owl said...

Talk about insights into people's minds: Imagine yourself living in a world where you actually believe that someone who spends 17 hours a day watching the "Gorilla Channel" has been elected president. No wonder those people are  hysterical. In their world a moron is in charge of the nuclear codes. How do they sleep at night?

Those who regard Trump as a savvy business man who just ended one of the most successful first years of any president would never have been fooled.  Thus proving which group has a better grasp of reality. Unfortunately, some --perhaps most-- of the delusional people work for the media.

Yancey Ward said...

Chuck, when someone protests that hard, the conclusion is pretty obvious.

Anonymous said...

The geniuses of Trump: he lives in his enemies' heads rent free.

Like Golden Shower, this Gorilla TV automatically discredited the veracity of his enemies' charges.