TWS Fact check is aware that there are few things less funny than explaining a joke, but fact checking one comes close.
“CONFIRMED: PayPal Shutting Down Accounts Belonging To Patriots,” the headline from the satirical Daily World Update claims, practically begging Facebook users to flag it as containing misinformation.
The article was written by one Mr. Flagg Eagleton. The fictional Eagleton is “the son of an American potato farmer” who spent seven years “on welfare picking himself up by the bootstraps” and who “finally got his HVAC certificate and is hard at work keeping the mobile homes of Tallahassee at a comfy 83 degrees.”
Eagleton reports:
Of course, none of this is true.
The satirical article cites PayPal spokesman Art Tubolls, a man who has fictitiously represented everyone from Sen. Jeff Flake and the “White House Office of Information and Propaganda” (an office that, unlike North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, does not exist).
There is even a bit of an Easter egg: Users who click on Tubolls’ supposed statement to Fox News are redirected to a Google search for “stop being stupid in spanish”; one of the many (obvious) hints the website provides.
While Daily World Update and the Facebook pages that shared the article are clearly marked as satire, some of the comments have TWS Fact Check questioning whether or not the audience is in on the joke.
If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email Holmes Lybrand at [email protected] or the Weekly Standard at [email protected]. For details on TWS Fact Check, see our explainer here.
