Facts: they make the story, they build our reality, but does anyone actually know what they are or where they come from?

Content creators come in all varieties; some upload videos of their cats, some create comedic short films and some relentlessly seek out The Truth in a quest to inform the public about the realities of the world around them. YouTube creators in the last category find themselves in a hard position: verifying information as credible before reporting on it to their audience.

These days, it’s hard to know that the news we’re getting is reliable. Mainstream media is controlled by The Man and benefits from maintaining the social order, censoring any story that doesn’t fit into their predetermined narrative. The alternative media is a breeding ground for wing-nuts and wackos from the political extremists to holistic new-agers. Many people stay informed through social media, which tends to be an echo-chamber where users filter out voices they don’t agree with and surrounded themselves with reports that confirm their preconceived notions.

Where can you turn for research if you’re a content creator who just wants to run an honest, grounded story, based on the undeniable facts? How can you make sure your YouTube channel is reporting the absolute, undeniable truth about the Reptilian Overlords’ most recent crackdown on the Mermaid Resistance? Is it even possible to know the truth?

Is it possible to be sure that everything you’re reporting is fact?

Where do facts end and subjective perspective begin? Say a study is done, under utmost scientific rigor, that finds 82% of people enjoy strawberries. One reader of the study might conclude the results proved strawberries are pretty good. Another might conclude that a majority of people have wonky taste buds. A third person might recognize a conspiracy from the scientists that take hush money from Big Strawberry. Maybe no one would recognize the absolute fact of the matter: strawberries are just government propaganda and don’t actually exist.

Is it possible to be sure that everything you’re reporting is fact? Unless you’ve experienced something personally, aren’t you just trusting other people’s accounts — other people that can be misinformed and/or liars? Even if you’ve seen something with your own eyes, you can’t always trust your own experience; optical illusions show us that our brains can be confused by simple tricks. Memories are fragile; they fade over time and can be influenced after they are formed. What is there that can be trusted as undeniable fact?

Everyone seems to have an agenda they’re pushing, which, in the search for facts, can leave us feeling like we’re grasping at straws. The quest for reliable facts could be a wild goose chase, devised to keep us too busy to overthrow the Reptilian Overlords. But perhaps, there’s something more to it. Maybe by checking and cross referencing, by researching and reviewing sources, by reading more of an article than just the headline — maybe we can find the truth about what’s going on in the world.

But we should proceed with caution, because The Truth has a way of changing things — even things we didn’t want to change.

Or maybe, that’s just what The Man wants you to think.

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