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| - Does the story that Oprah Winfrey is now the largest land owner in Western North Carolina come from an actual news source? No, that's not true: An image meme that said she "bought out hundreds of families" for "pennies on the dollar" originated on a Facebook page with a satire disclaimer. The owner of the page is known for tricking conservatives into liking and sharing made-up content.
The meme appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published on March 3, 2025, on a page titled "America's Last Line of Defense" with a comment that read:
Just like she did in Maui. It really makes you think...
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Mar 4 13:02:05 2025 UTC)
The text in the image read:
Oprah Winfrey is now the Largest Land Owner in Western North Carolina
She bought out hundreds of families that had no choice for pennies on the dollar
The image included a satire disclaimer that said, "Nothing on the page is real":
The photo in the meme was published by The Weather Channel on Instagram on September 30, 2024, in a slideshow with the following description:
Photos from Old Fort, North Carolina, show what residents are dealing with in the wake of Helene. The western part of the state, as well as other parts of Appalachia and the Southeast, saw devastating flooding and storm damage that completely destroyed homes. Tap the link in our bio tio see more images from Helene's path
According to the page transparency tab of the Facebook page that published the meme it was run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who, for years, has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers, and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images, or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustrations. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.
Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks trying to make a buck by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.
Here you can find some of the many, many stories from Blair's websites Lead Stories debunked over the years.
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