For years now we have been bombarded by marketing campaigns.
Vitamins, insurance, bullet blenders, carpet cleaners, supermarket value, lawyers, housing developments, cruises, charities… the subject is endless and of unlimited creativity.
All of them polished and exaggerated, shined up to make you like them – the thin edge of fake news and not so fake news. Vitamins and health remedies are apparently not what they are made out to be, insurance overcharges with pitfalls in fine print, bullet blenders destroy healthy fibre, carpet
cleaners only work on some carpets…
I remember the riots and looting in London a few years ago; with speculation that the have-nots were so driven and manipulated by marketing that they quickly resorted to 
theft when mayhem let them off their leashes. I thought then and think now that it is bad and immoral to dangle steak in front of hungry dogs, knowing that only the very few top dogs will be able to enjoy it.
Advertising drives acquisition into addiction – one has to have the latest iphone, music, earphones, news, cars, jeans, sneakers, piercings, tattoos, hairstyle… All of which is unnecessary shit.
Now the fake news and alt facts confrontation testing journalistic ethics the world over is hopefully a wake-up call to society in general to shake up our values.
It is the right time for a new Testament which will show us a way through the lies and blather! St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh forecast in 1132 that Francis would be the last Pope! Brace yourselves non-believers… maybe Armageddon is at hand.
But wait – maybe that was an early version of fake news!
Just to juice up a current debate, let the news seeker become a news xenophobe: only trust those sources you know are reliable. And here’s the rub: how do you authenticate these reliable sources? They are not necessarily (and are very unlikely to be) those that produce stuff you like and agree with! Seek out and examine dissent and contrary views.
Get back and examine your basic values and principles and work from there. Remember distrust of new and different things is not all bad, it can be appropriate.
sillysocksonfriday 