In what may be the perfect combination of everything wrong with 2018, the operator of the .news dot-word has sold a batch of premium .news domains to a purveyor of what can be best described as conspiratorial content for cretins.

Describing itself as "the global leader in high-quality, new top-level Internet domains," Donuts announced the sale of science.news, food.news, health.news, medicine.news, pollution.news, cancer.news, and climate.news to online clickbait factory WebSeed for a "six-figure price."

WebSeed – which runs 300 sites covering health, nutrition, technology, science, medicine, politics and culture – has already put up cookie-cutter websites on each of its .news domains, filling each "news" website with a delicate selection of bonkers stories and cherrypicked pseudo-science.

The latest lead article on climate.news? "The 'global warming' hoax: 30 years of failed predictions that never happened." That's washed down with: "Global warming / Climate change is dead, so when can conservatives say: We told you so?" And vaccines.news? "Health Basics Quiz: Which has killed more people, measles or the measles vaccine?"

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Of course, there is only one thing to do if you make a living from emitting ignorance-inducing infotainment: claim the complete opposite.

"In an age of 'fake news' and too much clutter, we want to offer readers high-quality, fact-based news content," said WebSeed CEO Mike Texas – in the actual press release from Donuts announcing the sale of the gTLD.

It's hard to imagine a greater example of the failure of new dot-word addresses than .news websites being sold to people pushing catnip for the contentedly credulous. But the cherry on the cake has to be the registry operator then putting out a press release claiming the opposite.

"We congratulate the WebSeed team for quickly establishing such outstanding businesses," said Donut's veep of sales Matt Overman. "Their use of the .news domains that align with popular search terms, paired with high quality content, has enabled them to launch and scale in record time."

And before you ask, yes, Texas also owns and runs Trump.news. ®