There was a hilarious video that went viral recently of a wedding scene gone wrong. It begins and ends with a catfight between the bride (dressed all in white) and a man in a T-shirt who turns out to be the groom's gay lover. A wedding planner, or best man, is caught in the middle and is clearly aghast.

The 33-second clip ends with the gay guy grabbing his estranged lover by the hand and running away with him, rescuing him thereby from the straitjacket of a straight marriage - with the woman in hot pursuit.

The video has been viewed about 5 million times on Youku to date and is titled: "The mistress is a man!" It looks like a bystander has shot the footage on a good quality smart phone.

It was posted, forwarded and re-tweeted by a number of major websites and a large number of those who commented opined this encapsulated a common dilemma for gay men in China, who set aside their sexual inclinations to satisfy their parents, do the conventional thing, get married and provide an heir.

Eventually, the "gay lover" - young actor Li Xiaolong - did come out and admit the film segment was a commercial and professed surprise at its popularity.

"Probably a passersby thought this was real, then filmed it and put it on the Web," Li commented, disingenuously, on his micro blog.

The point is that the makers of the film segment were initially content for people to assume this was a slice of real life while the video's popularity built up steam. Meanwhile, the vast majority of those who watched and passed the video link on were happy to be taken in because the film content played to their prejudices. And none of the video publishers - bloggers, editors, journalists - were bothered or professional enough to find out if it was authentic or not.

Entertainment and hits are the new truths.

I was taught at journalism school that newspapers and reporters are supposed to have a different set of values when it comes to the truth, the idea being that we supply critical thinking and verify the facts so readers/viewers can believe what is being said.

But in reality the Web has "democratized" media content and a blogger like Song Zude (though he has been successfully sued for telling lies on multiple occasions) is just as likely to be believed as a major reporting organization - which is competing on a level playing field for hits.

This would seem to suggest one of three things. Either people believe everything they see on the Web; or they don't believe any of it; or it doesn't matter much anymore.

My feeling is that it's the latter. Gone are the days when a single source from on high had a monopoly on the truth, instead there are just competing voices. Some readers do the job of journalists by supplying critical thinking and even verifying the facts by flesh searches and so on - but these people are in the minority.

Most of us can't be bothered. Why should we be? A lot of the news turns out to be false/publicity, anyway. The value of a story in our daily lives (barring crisis) is, its either funny, sensational or sexy - or not worth discussing around the water cooler. Following the news is like tuning into a soap opera. Reality TV is as real as it gets.

The bottom line is we no longer care and hence we would rather be entertained than informed. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?