I think that when something is presented as news it tends to convey a weight, a patina of respectability, for a lot of people. This story was always “Santa impersonator tells reporter kid died in his arms”. Would it have gone viral if it were Santa impersonator’s blog post, written in first person, instead? I doubt it.
What’s interesting to me is my getting called something unkind upthread for doubting the story. That seems like a pretty extreme response, doesn’t it? Maybe whoever made it is invested enough in their worldview that they don’t like their news stories being questioned. You get someone with the wrong worldview, and I bet that makes them very susceptible to uncritically consuming all that fake news that is in the news these days.
