Slop.

I was basing my comment on that and Masses Elites and Rebels, but my takeaway from those essays is that they don't believe the things they're saying and the targets of the propaganda aren't supposed to believe it in a meaningful sense either, only to acquire it as a kind of currency that can be used to justify their social position (e.g. asked why you're homeschooling your kids? Because Oprah is a devil worshipper!)

But it is the case. Let’s go through that list again. The following are all true of the people spreading the Procter & Gamble rumor:

1. They didn’t really believe it themselves.
2. They were passing it along with the intent of misinforming others. Deliberately.
3. They did not respect, or care about, the actual facts of the matter, except to the extent that they viewed such facts with hostility.

The post-truth element of this dynamic can't be understated. It's fundamental to how propaganda works: the accuracy of the claims is not an object to the emitter of the propaganda nor its target. The value of the propaganda comes purely from its capacity to make the world make sense from the POV of someone who has already bought into living their lives a certain way. But the difficult thing is that this does imply that after a certain point, we no longer have beliefs at all, just coping mechanisms detached from material reality and any kind of ground truth.