To Snopes.com

How are you not a bitter, cynical, depressed mess? How do you get up every day knowing all the lies created on the Internet while you were sleeping? Grab your coffee and make it a strong one; there’s a lot of work to do.

Arizona Iced Tea uses human urine in their brewing. A woman found a human finger in her chili at Wendy’s. The cremated ashes of the Pringles creator were packaged and sold to devotees of the chips. California wine contains arsenic. Brewery workers find the body of a co-worker in a vat. Aldi’s sold horsemeat. Where to begin?

Henry Kissinger
By White House Photographic Office [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Kissinger was the last Harvard grad to have perfect grades. UW adds the face of a black student to make the campus appear more inclusive, and if you’re black and go to Harvard, you don’t have to pay tuition to major in chemistry. A med student is shocked to see a relative as the cadaver under the sheet. A math prof gives a trick question--an unsolvable problem--and a student solves it.

Walt Disney was frozen before, or maybe just after, he died. He had an extensive porn collection, but objected to a single frame of a naked woman slipped into a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Disneyland doesn’t allow men with long hair to enter the park. Children have been kidnapped out of the parks. Tinker Bell was based on Marilyn Monroe.

Elvis, homeless, now dead, has been found in San Diego. Obama has lowered the drinking age to 18. Muslims students at the Catholic University of America protested offensive crucifixes found all over campus. Bob Marley was also found homeless and dead.

Sorting truth from lies online must be like sorting water from oil in the ocean. The absurd begins to seem possible and the mundane, improbable. The entire cacophony of human thought now has a venue with eye-catching gif’s and hyperlinks. One at a time, you pluck them out and study them. Most are false, rumors made up for the hell of it, but there’s no way to know, no magnet to use that attracts the truth only.

You stretch your back. Refill that coffee cup. Call your mom to take a break. She’s planting begonias today. “They’re sexy!” she says. Now you’re ready to get back to work.