Ordained “The Fake News King” by NPR, Jestin Coler built a network of websites meant to “infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right”. His empire soon grew to mimic the media monolith it satirized. As election day approaches and Coler’s techniques are adopted by armies of fake news purveyors, virality and reality intertwine in front of our eyes, leaving truth in the eye of the beholder.
To millions of Americans, the term “fake news” itself has come to describe not peddlers of falsehoods but the traditional news media. Have we opened Pandora’s Box in the age of “post-truth politics” or exposed a fundamental weakness buried in the spine of “Truth” as we know it?
In the famously flubbed words of former president George W. Bush, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee…Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…can’t get fooled again.” Or can we?
“Hello” We Lied was produced in the Documentary Film Masters of Fine Arts Program in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University. The short film recently premiered at Dok Leipzig, the San Francisco Documentary Festival and the Rhode Island Film Festival.
Official site: www.hellowelied.com
