That’s existed for a long time, if somewhat unintentionally.
Someone edits a factoid into a Wikipedia entry or posts it on a forum somewhere. People see it, believe it, and spread it. Then maybe the mainstream media cites it.
Well at that point it’s officially “real”. And if you try to argue against it people will use those “real” sources to “prove” the made up factoid.
I remember reading about someone, an actor or an author. Wikipedia had their birthday wrong. But writers had used Wikipedia to find the date and included it in articles. Wikipedia now uses those articles as proof that the incorrect birthday is correct.
> Someone edits a factoid into a Wikipedia entry or posts it on a forum somewhere. [...] Then maybe the mainstream media cites it.
That kind of thing happened to the former German minister of defence Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, whose full name is
Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg[0]
and not
Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg
which the Wikipedia article claimed and the news magazine Der Spiegel cited in an article. This article then in turn became the source for the slipped-in surname Wilhelm on his Wikipedia entry.
While his real full name already sounds totally made up Der Spiegel actually published a correction regarding his name.[1]
A few guys in my PhD office 15 years ago used to have a hobby of doing something similar.
They’d invent a “fact”, spin up a webpage with that fact, add the fact to Wikipedia and cite the webpage to add plausibility.
Then one of them would occasionally Google to see if any “reputable” sources were repeating that “fact” (after reading it on Wikipedia) and add/swap their references in to strengthen the Wikipedia text.
As long as the “facts” were trivial enough, it worked.
Oh, yes, another great example. I think I heard a story once about an island people actually thought was real because it was created for that reason but people forgot.
Someone edits a factoid into a Wikipedia entry or posts it on a forum somewhere. People see it, believe it, and spread it. Then maybe the mainstream media cites it.
Well at that point it’s officially “real”. And if you try to argue against it people will use those “real” sources to “prove” the made up factoid.
I remember reading about someone, an actor or an author. Wikipedia had their birthday wrong. But writers had used Wikipedia to find the date and included it in articles. Wikipedia now uses those articles as proof that the incorrect birthday is correct.
An ouroboros of proof.