[bsenftner]

It is a social network hack: 1) broadcast misinformation wide and often; 2) some individuals lacking in critical thinking accept the misinformation as true and start repeating it; 3) as the misinformation propagates through those that do not verify, it begins to be noticed by those that might verify new information, but so many people in their sphere have adopted this information they accept the information on faith that their peers are like them and have verified the new information; 4) this process repeats until those that do verify are negated by those that refuse to accept that their peers and themselves could be wrong.