#snope

[jezyan]

if they have no fans i’m dead or however that copypasta goes

[professorambrius]

Jeremy Hoax

Really people?

[thevideowall]

Is this what snopes.com is about?

[captainjonnitkessler]

Things I wish women were learning from true crime podcasts: how to spot early warning signs of abusive relationships, how to escape abusive relationships, how easily domestic violence can escalate to murder, how incredibly unlikely it is to be the victim of a crime done by a complete random stranger as opposed to friends and family

What women are learning from true crime podcasts: I am in CONSTANT danger and every day I survive without being murdered by a serial killer is a miracle. I should react to everyone I meet with distrust and paranoia and live my life as if I am in mortal peril and if anyone suggests that might not be healthy then they just don't understand what it is to Be A Woman In Today's Society

[saywhat-politics]

[thejaymaniac]

Heyyo, know it's march but if we could all make the New Year's Resolution to Not Spread Misinformation that would be pretty great. Like, before you reblog something or even repeat what you heard in a TikTok...try to look it up?

I know it's getting rougher out there as google gets enshitified (all my homies hate the ai overview; disable the fucking ai overview), but there are still relatively trustworthy places to find information. None of them are perfect obviously, but it's a really really good first step to not contribute to the tide of bullshit that put the current administration in power

Snopes is still the GOAT going strong, if you've seen a random internet rumor, chances are Snopes has an article about whether or not it's true

Media Bias Fact Check is a good baseline to check whether a site can be trusted to provide accurate information

and ofc Wikipedia has its problems, but it's a really good first step if you want some basic information

I've just seen a ton of people say or reblog a bunch of random shit that's simply not true or unsubstantiated, I've been guilty of this myself in the past (mostly in in-person conversations), and it's not doing anybody any good

As a teacher, I beg. I'm not even asking you to look this stuff up, I'm just asking you to not repeat it or boost it if you have not looked it up

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Musk with Jeffrey Epstein concubine Ghislaine Maxwell.

[madeupfromglue]

new biotech video on pinkie tech tips

[auntbibby]

DANGIT

elephants are not affini, i repeat, elephants are not affini.

stay away from the elephant. her matriarchal ass will not adopt u.

[furries-with-nonhumanity]

Nonhumans and the Misinformation of the Internet

(UPDATED PARTS IN GREEN)

I have been seeing more and more posts of people complaining about misinformation surrounding Nonhumanity, so I decided to throw together this post to clear the air.

I use “entity” to refer to the things Nonhumans identify as (EX: animals, fictional characters, concepts, etc…)

Here are the some misconceptions about the Nonhuman community...

1. “We know we’re human.”/“We don't identify as animals.”/“We don’t identify as animals, we just have animal souls.”

This ignores the existence of Physical Nonhumans, which are individuals who physically identify as a nonhuman entity. In this case, what someone may be thinking of is Otherheartedness, where someone strongly identifies with a nonhuman entity instead of as one. Otherhearted individuals can experience many of the same things Physical Nonhumans do, like shifts, or species dysphoria. Nonhumans are not clinical lycanthropes, or people who think they can transform or have transformed into animals.

2. “All Therians and Otherkin had past lives as their Theriotypes and Kintypes.”

You do not need to have a past life as an animal to be a Therian or Otherkin. Although I have seen this be disproven many times before, I still see people working under the assumption that all Therians and Otherkin had past lives as their theriotypes and kintypes, which is untrue.

3. “Therians and Furries use litter boxes in school.”

This rumor is untrue and was created by right-wing individuals to disenfranchise Transgender people. Furries and Therians ended up getting roped up in this false rumor.

4. “Theriantropy is a spiritual belief.”

Not everyone has spiritual beliefs connected to their Nonhumanity. “Therian” or any other related label are not inherently spiritual identities, but they can be for some people.

5. “Kinning is just for fun, if you take it seriously you need mental help.”

Physical Otherkinity is not a mental illness or disorder because it does not significantly negatively impact people’s lives. “Kinning for fun” is a fandom activity where people who feel connected to a certain fictional character and identify as it. It can also be linking as a funlink.

6. “Nonhumans are mentally ill.”

Nonhumanity is not a mental illness because, again, it does not significantly negatively impact people’s lives.

7. “Nonhumans are just kids dressing up and doing quads.”

Nonhumanity is far more complicated than a simple game of pretend played out by children. To dumb us down to what little content you see of us on platforms like TikTok and YouTube shorts is small-minded. You don’t have to have gear (masks, tails, ears, etc…) or do quads all the time to be nonhuman. It’s about how you feel inside. Many adults are Nonhuman too, sure, it’s less common to see on the internet, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

!!!Please note that some misinformation-spreaders are underage (less than 13) or may have a mental disability or illness. Please approach these people with kind firmness. If they react negatively, that’s their problem!!!

Sources (I have not personally used otherkin.wiki as a source, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a good one):

[heckyeahponyscans]

Snopes.com was THE fact-checking / lie-debunking website in the 2000s, covering everything from lighthearted fare like "is this a picture of Bigfoot?" to rumors about Iraq War, which at the time often spread via chain emails or Dick Cheney.

Well, Snopes still exists and I encourage you to check it out. They will investigate until they find the primary source of a photo, a quote, an article. This is especially important in a world where AI is increasingly able to fool the human eye and human ear.

In case you were wondering, the status of the photos / articles I clipped for this post are:

Israel making a deal with BetterHelp - Real, and the company was founded by an IDF soldier who proudly brags about this fact in his online profile. Also they have previously been caught selling private medical information.

IDF soldier threatening a woman with children - Real picture but not from current conflict

Are Palestinians forbidden from collecting rainwater? Yes, and the situation is even more dire than the headline makes it sound. Really recommend this article for a deeper understanding of the discrimination the Palestinians suffered even prior to the current conflict.

Did Israel use white phosphorus on Gaza? The evidence strongly points to yes. This article is VERY good, very well-researched.

[frameacloud]

Coordinated inauthentic behavior is when people make a bunch of social media accounts for fake people-- "sock puppets"-- to make certain attitudes seem as though they're popular, manipulate debates, or create the illusion of a grassroots movement. This article from Snopes gives some tips for how to spot the "tells" of these on Facebook. That's not the only place where it happens, though. What do you think are the warning signs of them on other social media platforms?

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide. 

--Elon Musk, citing Canadian Marketing professor Gad Saad, in an interview with Joe Rogan, 28 February, 2025.

Quote pulled from a Snopes.com fact-check article by Caroline Wazer, 10 March, 2025.

Ever since I read that quote (last night, as I'm writing this), I've been thinking about that phrase "civilizational suicide," and in what sort of worldview that could possibly make any sense.

Civilizations can change, over time, as individuals within societies acquire new knowledge and adapt their values and beliefs (see, for example, the polytheistic, pagan, Roman Empire shifting into Christendom). Or they can die out if their people do, when hit with an environmental catastrophe, or genocidal war.

But civilizations are not individual beings. They are abstractions, that are only recognized as coherent wholes when looking back through time. It's not possible to have empathy for an abstraction. And they are not sapient beings that can make a deliberate decision to self-destruct.

I think what Gad Saad and Elon Musk are afraid of is for our current Civilization to change so much, that they are no longer at The Top of the hierarchy. For them, people are only valuable as long as they serve the Social Order, and not the other way around.

[saywhat-politics]

Claim:

Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, said: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

[kaijuno]

“Snapped this picture while waiting in line at the Dutch Bros on 138th today. Turns out the young lady in line ahead of us lost her husband last night.

When the DB guys noticed she was struggling, they stopped and prayed with her.”

[lizardsfromspace]

It's very hard to look up anything related to Snopes not just bc their website was until recently excluded from the Wayback Machine, but bc they cover the most random bullshit and it's hard to find anything

Like, this is the featured story on their website right now

Why are they factchecking this? What are they factchecking? Did someone take this out of context and claim it wasn't from a movie, like how QAnon types clip Bosom Buddies out of context?

No, it's because someone responding to a tweet ABOUT TROPIC THUNDER commented on the blackface. So Snopes had to factcheck that this tweet about Tropic Thunder is, in fact, from Tropic Thunder

But if you click the thread the OP admits it was a joke? And ragebait? He said that on the 13th and they published this featured article today. Did they have to spend a week researching Tropic Thunder?

Snopes is now just full of articles like this, where I'm legit unsure what claim is being evaluated and why. It makes it extremely hard to find anything via their search bc it's clogged up with so much low-effort garbage debunking random tweets and slideshows no one ever believed. Here they essentially had to make a claim up - they took someone's joke seriously and ignored that it openly said the photo's from Tropic Thunder, in order to, I don't know, invent from whole cloth some misinformation about if Robert Downey Jr. wore blackface outside the movie, so that they could debunk misinformation that isn't real?

"The viral post was taken out of context" Was it? Was it taken out of context when it literally says it's from Tropic Thunder??? Does a site that didn't once see that the thread was a joke/ragebait over the course of a week's research really have the right to lecture anyone about context? And this is featured! This is the BEST of what they have to offer!

Anyway just a reminder that everything good on Snopes was written by the creator's wife and he upgraded it into a instant political factchecking site overnight by hiring random people off his forums