The Power and Comedy of a Single News Image

This surreal relationship between viewers and news images has turned comment sections into competitive sports arenas. People race to be the first to declare the photo “fake,” “misleading,” or “taken out of context,” even if they are unaware what the original context was supposed to be. The boldest critics insist they “can tell by the pixels,” a skill they claim to have developed by staring at low-resolution memes for years.