Whereas the social media age might permit misinformation to unfold like a highly contagious virus, ‘pretend information’ is, in fact, as outdated because the information itself. And, as The Nice Moon Hoax chronicles, the Moon proved fertile floor for misinformation lengthy earlier than the persistent conspiracy concept that the Apollo landings had been faked. On this quick, the Australian journalist Kirsty B Carter interviews the US author Matthew Goodman who explains how a sequence of tales, initially meant as satire and printed in 1835 within the New York paper The Solar, satisfied thousands and thousands that the Moon was teeming with life – together with, infamously, a race of bat-people. Explaining why the articles ended up being taken severely, the video particulars how revenue, leisure worth and the character of perception intertwined to perpetuate this fantastical hoax, mirroring developments that proceed, amplified, in the present day.
