> used to refer to a situation in which there is a choice between two different plans of action, but both together are not possible
The actual state of affairs is that both are occurring.
One example is this recently popular story on Reddit:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4aydjg/somehow-this-wild-...
> A bonkers hoax video about Bill Gates has been making the rounds on social media — and it’s setting the anti-vaxx conspiracy world on fire.
> The video claims to show Gates briefing the CIA in 2005 about a vaccine to immunize religious fanatics. The video, which is obviously faked, is getting gobbled up by online conspiracy theorists who’ve latched onto the Microsoft co-founder as the mastermind behind the coronavirus pandemic.
A lovely narrative, but if one actually bothered to read the article with critical thinking skills engaged (as would be the case if the article was written by conspiracy theorists, rather than written about conspiracy theorists), it would be obvious that the author didn't even make an attempt to provide any evidence that substantiates the claim that this story is "setting the anti-vaxx conspiracy world on fire".
This is very typically the case with articles about conspiracy theorists, which insinuate (usually without saying explicitly) that all(!) conspiracy theorists believe <x>, and the "evidence" for these claims, if any is provided at all, is almost without exception a simplistic narrative, or another article of the exact same form.
An example of just such an article was even provided as evidence to answer a question in this very HN thread! [1]
If one was to actually do the most basic of fact checking on such articles (the vice.com one above for example), they would frequently encounter posts like this one[2] where the author, rather than "gobbling up the obviously faked video", instead clearly points out the obvious propaganda techniques used by the MSM.
You'd think someone would eventually catch on and say something about this obviously recurring technique in news reporting, but such exposes would occur you know where...in a conspiracy theory community, and you know [3] what they say about conspiracy theorists!
[1] https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/11/five-telecom-towers-torched-po...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/gpj202/bill_gat...