Snopes began when David and Barbara Mikkelson met online at the Usenet discussion group alt.folklore.urban, where David posted under the username snopes, from a William Faulkner novel, and was simultaneously one of AFU’s most notorious trolls and prolific researchers. This origin story needs to be firmly kept in mind: the team behind Snopes were complete amateurs using Google, and as far from journalists as it’s possible to get.

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Punk rock philosopher. Liberalist contrarian. Grumpy old bastard. I grew up in a generational-Labor-voting family. I kept the faith long after the political left had abandoned it. In the last decade...