Pro tip: Old library website from 1999 taught me to double-check all my sources

Someone on a retro web forum gave me this advice 5 years ago: always verify info from personal blogs against at least one official source. I thought it was overkill until I found a 2007 Geocities page that claimed D.C.'s Union Station had a secret subway level. Turns out it was just someone's fan fiction, but I almost used it in a real article. I wasted 3 hours chasing that lead. Has anyone else fallen for old web content that turned out to be totally made up?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela_park15d ago

This is bigger than just old web content honestly. I've noticed people do the same thing with urban legends they heard from a friend of a friend. Like that one about the guy who woke up in a bathtub full of ice with his kidney gone. Everyone just passes it along without checking. Or the whole "we only use 10% of our brains" thing. That came from a misinterpretation of a 1900s psychology paper but now it's just accepted as fact. The internet just made it easier to spread that kind of lazy thinking.

perez.christopher15d agoProlific Poster

Wait, you're saying people actually thought we only use 10% of our brains? That's wild, I never knew that came from an old paper. @angela_park that totally makes sense though, the way stuff spreads without anyone checking.