Jordan Peterson’s Credulity is a Teaching Moment


April Fools’ Day is widely regarded as an especially dangerous day for internet misinformation. “Beware of pranks!” we are warned, as social media marketers use the holiday as an excuse to create content that might be funny if true, but isn’t. (Who among us will ever forget the day PornHub transformed itself into CornHub?) This April Fools’ Day, the Canadian website Western Standard ran a story claiming that the government had approved funding to convert one lane of the TransCanada Highway into a bike lane. It’s a rather obvious joke, but it also appears to be intended as satire directed at how the conservative-leaning Standard views “liberal” efforts to curb climate change by penalizing drivers: “This confirms our government’s plan to take as many cars off the road as we can to improve the environment” said Trudeau.

“There is really no reason if you have to visit your la (sic) grandmother in the hospital in Vancouver, and you live in Calgary, that you can’t bike it in a couple of days.” In case the outlandish content alone was not enough to alert readers that it was an April Fools’ Day joke, there is a disclaimer at the end of the article: From of all us at the Western Standard, have a happy April Fools Day. Despite the disclaimer, the article snared at least one fool — erstwhile psychologist and anti-“woke” crusader Jordan Peterson. Peterson embedded the article in a quote-tweet in which he tagged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: