I believe I've actually heard about this before. This source talks about an old news broadcast on April fools day, 1957, where they show a family basically harvesting spaghetti from a tree. This is a good example of a "lighthearted" troll, as this was a joke and obviously not real. However some people did assume it as real as it's stated in the source that hundreds of people phoned in to ask how can they grow spaghetti on their own tree (that's funny to think about). So I guess this could be seen as perhaps maybe early presence of spreading "fake news" but this broadcast was made on context of April Fools Day, so it was meant to be a joke.

I've always had this same thought of "why do people take time out of their days to just troll via online or in person?". One of the ideas that I had originally was that it came from a place of sadness. Perhaps they aren't in the best situation at home or maybe they're going through something so they take it out on other people by "trolling" and to feel smarter than everyone else. I feel like this would be a good explanation as to why most people troll, specifically the ones who seem to do it out of spite and not in a comedic way.

When reading this source, about COVID-19, one factor that I realized was the number of fatality's that were encountered for. It seems like this source actually undermines the actual number, perhaps to make people less in a panic. However, this could lead to the majority of the public to be untrusting of the sources giving them data, which in turn will lead to future reportings not being taken as serious.

Parasocial relationships are so common nowadays, especially in pop culture. We see this behavior done with fans of artist, fans of movies, or social media influencers. I believe that there is a difference between "admiring" someones work and then "obsessing" over someones work. There should be a clear line between the two, and some people don't have that thinking. In this example, we see that this lady believes Mr. Rodgers knows of her. While this is true in someway, he doesn't really "know" her. He just acknowledges her. But to this girl she genuinely believes that she is a part of his life.