Enjoy!
We’ve been seeing an awful lot of “let’s debunk these wacky false claims!” videos lately — but even though there have been so many of them, I still haven’t gotten sick of them yet. Case in point: College Humor’s latest video, “13 Things You Think Are True But Aren’t.” Hosted by comedian Adam Conover (who you might remember from our exploration of the engagement ring back in February), it highlights 13 random facts and tidbits most of us have grown up thinking are true… and then totally disproves them. Sorry if you really, really wanted to believe that the flush toilet was invented by someone named Thomas Crapper; it wasn’t. Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper is understood to be a complete fabrication.
The big picture question, though, is this: Why do we love believing these kinds of “facts,” even though they’re not true? Conover’s theory chalks it up to the fact that they all tell good stories. We get a kick out of, say, thinking that Albert Einstein sucking at high school math; it both makes him relatable and adds to his legend at the same time. Sometimes, though, the real story is way better than the fictional one, so it pays to dig far down enough to find out the truth.
