What's Joel Ornsteen Got To Do With Poe's Law on the Internet????

Admittedly, I once fell for a fake “news story” about a hunky evangelical Christian preacher who had just accepted a $110 million contract from Joel Osteen. It was a parody, but I believed it because it mentioned Osteen, an evangelical con man whose high life is lived on the backs of poor parishioners. Real news about him is so jawdropping that it had primed me to accept almost any tale of extremely pious greed, as long as it involved him. Within minutes though, alert friends flagged my post, because the story came from the impeccably unreliable Babylon Bee...Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire. I'm still living that one down.

To quote Wikipedia, “Poe's Law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views.”

Parody works either because, used with flair, a wild exaggeration of reality can get to straight to the heart of evidence-based truth---

Or it's something that some people just desperately want to believe.....

Or people are so dogmatic and flaming gullible that they'll believe anything that reinforces their beliefs about someone or somethiing they hate. Anything.... 

Therefore, it is important to check neutral sources. 

Don't just ask yourself if it might be true. 

Anything might be true. 

What is?