102 - [citation needed]

Unnatural Phenomenon: [citation needed]

No one can personally verify everything they hear or see. You can try but ultimately you’re placing your trust in the veracity of at least one source (who could, for all you know, be some kind of social Cartesian demon). Even if it’s something you’re anally retentive about, most people aren’t that diligent. They’re exhausted. There’s too much information and anxiety about things that are frightening and completely beyond their control. They want a story that confirms the things they already know and stirs those fears into righteous anger, at least anger feels powerful. Something that tells them that opposing views are malicious falsehoods deliberately dreamt up to hoodwink others who don’t know any better, who are either ignorant or just plain evil. That’s how you get various sides of any contentious issue publicly lying and accusing each other of the same.

It’s not new, but in the modern era the specific backlash against spreading deliberate lies as public information has taken on a life of its own. An indiscriminate boogeyman able to target those who others look to as a reliable source, anyone with profile. They don’t even have to be guilty (the magickal version of it seems to happen to the squeaky clean ones more often). Some errant magick, a convenient public mouthpiece and a piece of news is all it takes.

[citation needed] twists perception of information shared by a specific source. They’re lying, they have to be, just look at them! The blatant untrustworthiness of the subject of this phenomenon is plain as day, regardless of the actual truth of what they’re sharing. You can go check it if you’d like, but if they’re saying 2+2=4 and you have independent verification you’re still not going to be able to shake the feeling. Effectively it’s like they fumbled a Lie check. If you can’t reconcile the disconnect then that’s probably a low-level Self check, most just go along with it without realising.

Usually this happens to someone once and then the fallout gets lost in the cycle to everyone except those closest to it. In bad cases it ricochets around an issue, targeting everybody repeatedly and picking up steam until one side screws up and lies for real. Then there was that one news anchor who ended up committing suicide because a demon who was obsessed with getting even with him (for “having such great hair”, of all things) wouldn’t let up, tanked his career and ruined his personal relationships, but that’s rare I promise. Would I lie to you?