1) you know where lies come from: people you know. Therefore you can trust people who tell the same lies.
2) you can trust people who believe your lies because believing lies is more expensive than going with the truth, because expensive signals are harder to fake.
3) the truth hurts. No one wants to follow someone who hurts them. We prefer to follow people who lie to us so we will feel better.
Some time around 2000 I started seeing most news (especially long form) through this lens and I discount/research it a bit more the more it follows a standard narrative. Usually, it's a sign that facts have been cherry picked or out of context to fit, thought that's not always the case. It's rare that there's a story (or scientific research) that doesn't have some warts and things that don't fit, and to me those aspects are part of what give it a ring of authenticity... although they are also falsifiable.
Many current memes (and science press releases) are terribly simplistic and made for those who truly don't care about truth, but are looking for that hit of satisfaction of discovering they were always right.
- a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.
- an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
The former refers to things like the sometimes clever pictures you see on social media, the latter refers to things like what you read in the newspaper (often referred to as facts), but both kinds have widely varying levels of truth.