I once related a completely fake story, claiming it was a true story as relayed to me by a personal acquaintance. And it was a killer story, too: it made people feel smarter and therefore superior to the characters in the story, and also included a few political digs I knew a lot of people would agree with. Really it was the perfect formula for garnering lots of thups and POTDs. And it worked, and I felt great as I watched the beautiful laughies and POTDs roll in. Man, what a payoff!

And when someone pointed out that this story, told verbatim, was in fact all over the internet, I disappeared like a fart in the wind rather than facing the music and admitting I’d just copied & pasted someone else’s made up story.