Type of Content
Approved Story
1
Format
Region
News Item Format
Standard
Autocurated
0
Monday marked the five-year anniversary of the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax. I say that with some hesitation, because I know that there’s not a single living person who ever wants to hear the name Jussie Smollett ever again. Every detail of that story has been covered, and every joke you can possibly make about it has already been made.
But if there’s a silver lining in that whole episode, it’s that everyone on the planet received a crash course in how easy it is to lie about “hate crimes.” You can come up with the most ridiculous story imaginable, and people will still buy it. That was the moment that hate crime hoaxes peaked. So if you’re a rational person, you might think that, post-Smollett, the number of reported “hate crimes” would go down at least a little bit. After all, the gig is up. No one’s ever going to be as naive as they were back in 2019 ever again.
But that assumption, as logical as it might seem, would be very wrong.