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The first website I remember visiting is Snopes.com.
When I was a kid, there were some people in my life who liked to forward chain emails about all sorts of conspiracy theories and urban legends. Their critical thinking skills were rather weak at times, so I eventually began looking up everything they sent me on Snopes and replying to them with links to that site that disproved rumours like the one about strangers giving out poisoned Halloween candy or the one about people being drugged by strangers and having their kidneys stolen.
Sometimes that link was all I replied with if the conspiracy theory or urban legend was a bigoted and/or ridiculous one. I’m a patient person in general, but I draw a firm line at stuff that is used to harm people or that is so obviously untrue even a child should be immediately suspicious of it.
Eventually, they stopped forwarding any of those sorts of emails to me at all.
Adult Lydia would have been a bit more tactful when sharing links to disprove yet another wacky email, but I still think that people should research the information they share online before insisting that Scary Internet Story #567 is 100% true and that everyone should panic about things that a) are so vague no one has found proof of them really happening, b) are medically or scientifically impossible, and/or c) have been recklessly misinterpreted in the worst possible light while leaving out information that is critical to understanding the truth. Mixing what is at best a teaspoon of fractured facts into a frothy gallon of pure nonsense helps no one except scam artists.
Now I’m wondering if I should start reading Snopes again. I only have a couple of people still left in my life who believe in conspiracy theories and urban legends, so I don’t know too much about the current crop of them.
If you have a favourite lighthearted urban legend or conspiracy theory, tell me about it. I’m personally intrigued by the Area 51 lore and what the U.S. government might really be doing there.
1. Healthy Boundaries
Title: St. Aymon – A Canadian Horror Story
Strawberries are my favourite food.
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone celebrating it!
Title: The Cybernetic Tea Shop
I love being pleasantly surprised by what I read. Here are my three answers from three different genres: literary fiction, memoir, and middle grade. I read them all last year.
Many of the books I read are from authors who are new to me or new in general, but I don’t normally spend a lot of time digging around in debut book lists.
Title: Over the River and Through the Woods
Lunch is my biggest meal of the day. It’s common for me to eat dishes like pasta, rice and beans with various seasonings and vegetables added in, stir-fry of various sorts, tacos, fajitas, or chilli. I batch cook a couple of days a week, so these are often leftovers from previous meals. During heat waves, I switch to cold options like sandwiches, hummus and pita, large salads that include a source of protein, etc.