During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast — click here to tune that in — host Todd Wilken and I talked about the ongoing war between The Babylon Bee, a conservative Christian news satire site, and the progressive fact checker squad at Snopes.com.

Oh, and as often happens in discussions of religion and public life, the threat that (trigger warning) Chick-fil-A seems to pose to American civilization ended up in the mix.

Here’s a typical question from the discussion: Is it satire to satirize contemporary satire by pretending to think that the satire is actual real news?

Or something like that.

The bottom line is that real news is starting to sound like satire. As the Bee said the other day: “Reality Criticized For Not More Clearly Distinguishing Itself From Satire.” At the same time, lots of satire is starting to sound like subtle (or not so subtle) forms of real — or some would say “fake” — news. Take the top of this New Yorker piece for example:

Customers across the nation who turned out for Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day were in for a surprise, as the chicken restaurant chose today to launch a new product, Hate Sauce.

Delighted customers mobbed the restaurants to try the zesty new sauce, with many chicken fanciers ordering their sandwiches with extra hate. “It’s so spicy it makes your mouth feel like it’s on fire — like a gay couple in hell,” said Harland Dorrinson, who sampled the sauce at a Chick-fil-A in Orlando.

That’s pretty blunt and, thus, it’s easy to assume that it’s satire (which it is).

But how about the quotes in the following story about a Chick-fil-A war at the University of Kansas?

“KU granted Chick-fil-A, a bastion of bigotry, a prime retail location in the heart of our campus,” KU’s Sexuality & Gender Diversity Faculty and Staff Council said in a letter sent this week to Chancellor Doug Girod, the provost’s office and the athletic department.

“Moving Chick-fil-A to the Union and granting it a role at the start of all home football games violates the feelings of safety and inclusion that so many of us have striven to create, foster, and protect on campus, and sends a message that the Union, KU Athletics, and the administration at large are more concerned about money and corporate sponsorship than the physical, emotional, and mental well being of marginalized and LGBTQ people.”

“Bastion of bigotry”? People on a diverse secular university campus are feeling threatened and unsafe because of chicken nuggets of the wrong stripe?

Real or very subtle satire written by conservative trolls?

That appears to be real.

OK, how about the information in this case?

That was satire (as in deliberately fake news), but the Snopes.com team checked it out, just to make sure that it wasn’t real. I assume that this was because some people complained to Snopes.com about this particular Babylon Bee item because they thought some people might assume that it was real.

Ah, but what if the people who “complained” were Christian conservatives who did this as a way of trolling Snopes.com, trying to see if it would fall for the trick and research yet another Bee item that was obviously satire? What if these trolls were satirizing Snopes.com by pretending to be confused that a Bee item was real news so that they could then laugh about the fact that a fact-checking site was, momentarily, investigating whether the item was real? Or something like that.

Wait, there’s more.

What happens if this confusion — real or imaginary — happens enough that the Great and Mighty Lords Of The Internet decide to treat The Babylon Bee (and other religious websites of a traditional bent) as enemies of the people and limiting their access to the giant social-media platforms? That would cut into these publishers’ ability to make money online.

Consider this newsworthy passage in a manifesto by Bee founder Adam Ford, about the time that he sold the website:

The majority of people get their news from social networks. We rely on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, YouTube, etc. to such a degree that we allow them to decide what content we consume, what issues we consider important, what news is news, what is and is not allowed to be said, what's true and what's not.

These companies shape the way our brains think by controlling what our eyes see every day. When we search for something on Google, it’s Google that decides the results. When we go on Facebook, it's Facebook that decides what news and content we see. When we go on Twitter, we only see what they have permitted us to see. … Now they increasingly shut down content that they don't approve of. 

A lot of this fighting is based on conservative Christians producing biting humor about politics.

So things would be safer if the Babylon Bee team stuck to poking fun at religious people? You know, with headlines like this favorite of mine: "New Prayer App Delivers Electric Shock Every Time User Says 'Just'."

In my column, Bee publisher Seth Dillon noted that the most-clicked and forwarded item in the history of the website was a piece of satire with this headline: "Joel Osteen Sails Luxury Yacht Through Flooded Houston To Pass Out Copies Of 'Your Best Life Now.' "

That’s obviously satire. Right?

Wait. Believe it or not, journalists at the Houston Chronicle really dig into this and produce a story with this headline: “Debunked: Fake Joel Osteen yacht story spreads after Hurricane Harvey shelter controversy.”

(Cue: audible sigh.)

Enjoy the podcast.