“How can anyone think this is real?” I found myself murmuring when this aired.

But who gets their news from real news anymore? We get our news from morning-after viral videos attacking the real news, or from videos attacking the videos. Our entertainment becomes a kind of horror. Our horror becomes a kind of entertainment. The lines between irony and truth blur in ways we barely notice.

Where is this heading? On the day that the Ferguson police released the footage of what they said was Michael Brown in the convenience store, Mashable ran a story about how ClickHole, The Onion‘s parody of BuzzFeed-esque clickbait sites, is frequently indistinguishable from the targets it sets out to satirize. So many Facebook users mistake Onion links for real news that the social network is testing a “satire” flag. Earlier this summer, Japanese roboticists unveiled “the first android newscaster” in Tokyo. She has “perfect language skills, and a sense of humour,” according to the AFP video of the event. Maybe she does. But it has grown harder to say what is funny in 2014. It has grown harder to know what is real.

FB friend:"I love that it's verboten to call anyone names, unless the person hated is a conservative. But I will turn the other cheek and smile especially because I am laughing at the hypocrisy. I am a hypocrite too, in fact I think we all have things that don't mesh (why do I grind my own wheat yet still eat processed buns?  Because I haven't figured out how to work that into my time yet.). I just feel like there are two different ways you can handle people different from you. The Lord calls us to love them, not ridicule them. I get tired of people who view different views as "uneducated." I think it is a cop out. And so, while I appreciate that you appreciate this article, I call out the author's name-calling, with Capital Letters even, as a source of divisiveness and a lack of love. That message needs to be brought back to the forefront of any conversation. I can't get past the Blonde Gun-Toters. HELLO! That's me! I love him anyway. Peace, bro."

me:" Hooray for hypocrisy! Not sure that all name calling is hatred and/or love. I think it is also reasonable to say that name calling exists on both sides and in between. Name calling provides a lot of easy content. No research needed. There probably are some uneducated people in some of these disagreements. Not everything is a matter of opinion and humans do, sometimes and eventually, learn a few things."

FB friend:"Yep."