Reddit in particular is infected by this kind of toxic thinking. One on the one had, I think individuals hate being fooled, and so there’s a rush to decry any remarkable or interesting anecdotes as “bullshit”. In this case in particular, I suspect the disbelievers are stuck in soul-sucking jobs they hate, and one way they cope with that is by truly believing that everyone else in the world is in a similar situation.
Its such a strange, depressing way to approach content imo. Did the story happen? Maybe, maybe not, we can’t know for sure. Do I want to believe it happened? Yes. Are there valuable aspects in the story that I can learn from and potentially use in future? Yes, absolutely. Is there any harm in me choosing to believe his anecdote is real and it’s actually made up? No, I don’t think so.
Also, don’t get me wrong — there is plenty of fake content, or implausible content, that is worthy of skepticism because it has a nefarious agenda, fosters misinformation, etc. But sometimes people just need to chill out.
I'm not sure if I believe this, and I certainly don't think it has much to do with the existence of r/thathappened (which does indeed seem much more rooted in people's fear of having been a sucker). But it's interesting to think that the basic intuition of "true stories are more common than fake ones" might be misleading with respect to Reddit in particular, because of the specifics of how Reddit works.
(The point about it being harmless is unpersuasive to me; I want to believe that a given story is true if and only if it is actually true.)
Its such a strange, depressing way to approach content imo. Did the story happen? Maybe, maybe not, we can’t know for sure. Do I want to believe it happened? Yes. Are there valuable aspects in the story that I can learn from and potentially use in future? Yes, absolutely. Is there any harm in me choosing to believe his anecdote is real and it’s actually made up? No, I don’t think so.
There’s actually a whole subreddit on this topic https://reddit.com/r/nothingeverhappens
Also, don’t get me wrong — there is plenty of fake content, or implausible content, that is worthy of skepticism because it has a nefarious agenda, fosters misinformation, etc. But sometimes people just need to chill out.