Just when humanity invented technology that allows us to acquire certain, truthful knowledge and to share it easily, a sudden change of direction has taken place. We’re turning away from facts to float on a wave of disinformation and often mistaken intuition. It’s not clear whether the truth still means anything. Nor how to distinguish lies from irony or fiction.

A man with his hair in a distinctive side parting and a reddened angry face stretches out a pointing finger and declares with a frown: “Fake news!” This slogan quickly became an irreverent (or hateful) way to silence adversaries – just how fake news itself has become an element of jokes, but is simultaneously a phenomenon that is seriously and in a real way disintegrating our world.

Many different varieties of T-shirt depicting Donald Trump proclaiming his trademark expression are available to buy, and it’s this image of the president that will be the most enduring memento of his political career – in a time when Mr Trump will no longer be news.

In the meantime, it remains symbolic of this era in which we’re turning our backs on factual events and proof, and looking doe-eyed at misleading, mendacious or nonsensical content. The robots that spin the global drum of news entertainment (which includes news and all sorts of rubbish, cynical lies, mistakes, jokes and propaganda) serve the interests of money. If you’re wondering