Continuing Internet Vigilantism

Remember how before, I wrote about "facts" on the internet, and researched them to see if they were true? Well I'm gonna do that again.

Vigilante Dog

Nobody Knows who Invented Eyeglasses
Hmm, that doesn't seem right. We know who invented the cotton gin, and nobody gives a fuck about that anymore, so how can we not know who invented glasses? I know If I invented something that awesome I'd tell everyone immediately. 


Well actually, I bet that was the plan for the guy who invented them all along. He tried them out for the first time and thought "holy shit these work" and was so excited about finally doing something not useless that he had a heart attack and died. And by the time he was found he was just a skeleton holding a mysterious new invention. I picture two people stumbling upon his corpse:


"Whoa, what's this scary skeleton holding? Whoa coole, do you suppose this guy invented these things?"


"Yeah probably, who is he?"


"I dunno man it's just a skeleton. Skeletons all look alike."


"Ok, maybe he's holding a note with his name on it?"


"Well even if he was how would we knowe it's not someone else's name?"


"Shit. Wait, how do we know it's not a lady skeleton?"


"Good pointe. How can you telle?"


"I dunno check the relative width of their shoulders and hips or something."


And then they continued with their anatomy discussion and fuck if they every figured out who the person actually was. 


So is this "fact" just bullshit or do we really not know? 


Well, according to wikipedia, I think we've got it narrowed down far enough so that's good enough for me, let's move on. 


Oh and I couldn't find a suitable picture for any of this crap, so here's a bunny in midair.

Humans Swallow 7/8/75 Spiders in a Year/Lifetime
Ohhh boy, we've all heard this one before. Apparently the only reason we aren't covered in spiders all the time is because we move around? Like as soon as we fall asleep they come out of their hiding spots and say "let's go in that dude's mouth, and after it's pretty clear that we shouldn't be there let's get swallowed somehow instead of just crawling back out." Hmm, I dunno about that, and here's why:


First, like I've just illustrated, it seems like it's against a creature's best interest to crawl into the mouth of a sleeping giant that will kill them. 

Second, who's gathering this data? Did some dude wake up with a spider in his mouth one morning and think "well fuck me that probably happens 7 or 8 times a year!" If you think about it, the nature of this fact implies we're swallowing the evidence, which means the only way to verify it would be to videotape someone's mouth while they sleep every night for however long it takes for a spider to crawl in there. 


And finally, if it's based in fact, why does the amount vary so much 7? 20? 75? Every year? A lifetime? But hey I'll play devil's advocate and admit that I guess you can't rule out the possibility, because bugs can do some weird shit.


Well, with astoundingly little effort, you'll find the myth debunked here, here, and here and probably a million other places. Seriously, all you have to do is type "do we swallow spiders in our sleep" into google and you'll be flooded with sites screaming "no shithead"


So there you go. If I hear anyone else repeat this fact, go ahead and climb aboard the train to punch-town, next stop your face.

Some Beaver Dams are over 1000 Years Old.
Whoa. That's older than your mom. Who the hell figured this out? And how the fuck did they figure it out? And who the fuck cares? Did a guy watch a beaver damn get built, then when he was about to die he was all "wait, I gotta get someone to find out how long this thing hangs around" and so he told his son "hey man keep track of this" and so forth for generations? On top of that: even if you knew the age of the wood, how do you know how long the wood has been arranged into a beaver dam? Except for almost your mom, nobody is old enough to know this for sure right?


Well when doing my research, I stumbled across the following and kind of got distracted because it's god damn hilarious:

Apparently we've all been looking in the wrong place.

So instead of researching further I'll just assume they figured stuff out using some sciency combination of technology and and databases. They probably carried the one at some point too.




The Creature with the Biggest Brain in Proportion to its Size is the Ant
Yeah? Well they still seem pretty fucking dumb to me.