Or was it that you were saying there that the “apex of the story” itself was clinically insane.
If we’re going to get pedantic, the insane in this particular usage was an obvious colloquialism which usually functions as a substitute to words like unbelievable or absurd rather than implying a DSM V diagnosis under the generic umbrella of a word indicating mental illness. If you strip the word completely out of context and take it to have only a single meaning, you’ll end up with the interpretation to which you resorted.
Conversely, you accused me of calling supporters of the theory insane and at no point were Pizzagate theorists and the word insane included in the same sentence, so at no point did I use the word insane to describe the theorists, which was obviously the context to which I was referring. There is such a thing as taking a word too literally, stripping away all context.
In this case, it still seems clear that the implication you’re making above is that pizzagate followers are insane for taking it seriously.
There is no logical rule that mandates that only insane people’s pursuits or concerns reach an absurd apex. Insanity as a verbal substitute for absurdity entails a lack of logical rigor or mistaken assumptions, not mental illness.
Am I using a bit of tongue and cheek hyperbole here?
No, just the logical fallacy of begging the question after taking a word out of context in such a way that its rendered effectively meaningless.
But the fact is that you didn’t need to use the word “insane” to get the same message across.
How about I decide what words I use in my own writing? Is that fine by you or should I start running drafts by you for approval?
“Fake” news means it’s already be proven false. Already debunked. No need to look into it or ask the authorities to look into it.
Fake news has become a generic colloquialism for output from dubious and frequently malicious sources highly likely to be false. In this particular case, the 4Chan posts contained a glossary of supposed pedophile code words no one can confirm actually exist and symbols which exist in some form pretty much everywhere you look, and the story is being kept afloat by bots, as I detailed in the previous response.
Authorities generally don’t investigate meritless accusations based on tweet or an anonymous image board post of very dubious accuracy. So you want law enforcement to investigate someone because… the internet said so?
This whole claim that it’s fake news is my whole objection to your article.
My field is computer science, I can do pedantry all day. But never have I dragged out a massive discussion just because a word or two in an article was out of place for my tastes. Sites known for perpetuating fake news are spread the story and fanned the flames, so I’m calling it what is it. If you’re unable to deal with that, it’s your problem.
