We live in a time rife with questionable (if not, outright fake) news. With a lot of discourse happening online, it’s getting trickier to separate the fact from the lie. A trending game hopes to help you discern fake news by doing the most counterintuitive thing — teaching you to write fake news.
The game, called Bad News, tags itself as a “vaccine” for fake news by injecting you with humorous doses of lies.
Bad News launches directly from your browser (no installation needed). In the game, you’re a fledgling writer hoping to establish a globally recognized, cringe-worthy fake news blog in the future. Through a series of text prompts and questions, the game’s narrator guides you through the journey of creating fake news.

Image source: Bad News
The game asks you tap into either your virtual reader’s anger or fear. Through your choices, the narrator will tell you if a headline is too fake or too right-wing. By guiding you, its goal is to optimize your headlines for gaining the most followers while maintaining a decent amount of credibility. The game also teaches how to spin the most positive of news into the most outrageous conspiracy theory. And yes, it also lets you use Twitter bots to boost your followers by thousands.
You win the game by building an empire of fake news, breaking down rational discourse into conspiracy chaos. You lose by becoming too rational or too outlandish. Throughout the game, you earn “badges” which correspond to the tools that fake news writers leverage on — impersonation, polarization, conspiracy, among others.
All fun aside, the game’s ultimate goal is to teach players how to spot fake news in the real world. While the news articles you write in the game are completely fictional, the methods it uses are completely credible. Also, the game shows the massive implications that a fake news Twitter army can cause.
The game was created by the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab and Drog, a media literacy organization. Besides a tool for change, the game hopes to power research efforts on the effect of fake news.
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