Once there was a Monk who lived along with his students in a monastery. One day a student spread a gossip about another student among his friends.

When the Monk came to know about it, he said that what he did was wrong. The student felt guilty and asked what he should do now so as to atone it.

The Monk asked the student to bring his pillow and tear it apart and spread it’s stuffing all over the place. Then he wanted him to recollect all of those that he just spread, and put them back into the pillow.

The student found that many of those stuffings flew away in the wind. But still he succeeded in collecting 80% of it back into the pillow.

Seeing this the Monk said

“Some things in life spread so badly that even the spreader loses their control over it. That’s how fake news also works. Even if you correct 80% of the population who heard about it, rest of the 20% are still in the believe that it is true.”