[shephardjhon]

The only tangible clue you mentioned that didn't rely on "it sounds absurd" was the fact that it was initially cross posted with r/Drama and I agree with you on that point. If journalists could easily see that, they should have looked into what it was.

If the "joke" is supposed to be similar to what Sacha Baron Cohen does, this isn't enough. Like his Erran Moorad stuff, a reasonable person would look up his claims before sitting in for an interview or "training" with him and asking for 3 year olds to be given guns. In Borat 2, the disguises seemed to be intentionally bad.

Most importantly, at the end of the joke he came out to the world and said it WAS a joke and publicized that it was a joke. What r/Drama is doing is less like a joke and more just ways to basically start a civil war. If they were genuine clowns and cultural critics like Cohen(who is literally a classical clown according to Wisecrack) they would come out and proudly declare it in public.