Like most people many of my friends on social media share many of my views. But not all of them and I have a couple who are at polar opposites. Some of the stuff they share, especially about politics, especially recently, is truly frightening. Not because of the actual content, but more the fact that many people are believing it, liking, sharing and engaging positively with it.

There’s a temptation to ditch these friends and not have to see it, but I like having a window into a world I would otherwise never come across. Recently though, there’s another trend emerging. It’s not fake news because, seen through the right (or wrong) filter, everything can be fake news. It’s all about interpretation of facts, combinations of radical interpretations of those cherry-picked facts and then exaggerations of minor events to turn them into something significant.

And it seems, that among these passionate, excitable communities (particularly on either side of the Brexit debate), there’s a need – almost a requirement – to escalate the incredulity and exaggeration to maintain people’s interest and poster’s position in the hierarchy of their group.

A recent post on (of all things) the Jacob Rees Mogg Appreciation Page – it exists, I kid you not – had a post reporting a series of scurrilous facts a poster going by the name of Mark Anthony had discovered about the EU. The gist of it was that they re all workshy bad-people with their snouts in the trough and were absolutely not to be trusted. Mr Anthony stopped short of accusing them of being witches about to order the slaughter of every first-born UK child, but only because I suspect he was saving that for his next post.

The ‘facts’ he was reporting were clearly either exaggerated, cherry-picked or taken very much out of context, but he (and almost 5000 people who’d viewed the post) clearly believed them. And then it struck me – is this how religions begin?

Imagine the idea of a few people sharing a common purpose or view on the world. It could be something positive. Or negative. It could be Brexit. I’m not picking on Brexiteers here, just using it as an example. New people joining the group need to demonstrate their dedication and establish some credentials, so they exaggerate some key point in order to gain recognition and acceptance. We’ve all done it.

The next wave of newcomers do the same thing and the next and before you know it the accepted ‘lore’ regarding the things we are for or against has become hugely ridiculous to outsiders, but absolutely believable to the followers.

There’s a concept known as cognitive dissonance that describes how people or groups of people, when faced with something that opposes or contradicts a belief they strongly hold, actually end up believing it more strongly. In the face of criticism, the group turns inward and, when someone emerges from within who speaks wisely and builds a credible defence to the criticism, they get behind them and start to follow the words of ‘The leader’ regardless of how ridiculous they might be. As human beings we like to be led and someone charismatic and credible, bringing all the threads together is easy to believe in.

And it’s a short step from there to the exaggeration being passed onto the leader.

‘I hear he turned boiling water into tea.’

‘Well, that’s nothing, when I met him he turned water into wine.’

‘Pah. He turned my dog into whisky, the whisky into a machine gun and then shot himself before coming back to life again as my dog.’

Boom. And they’re off. Before you know it, he’s walking on water, curing the sick and talking to some great man in the sky, who apparently created everything.

If only social media had been around in biblical times can you imagine how many different religions we’d have now and how truly incredible would the stories have become.