True/False/Other

Lately, I've been feeling like my grasp on reality has started slipping.

I don't go out much. Most of the time, I don't have a reason to, and I'd rather stay inside, so that's what I do. My knowledge of what is happening, whether it be on the local, state, national, or global level, is severely limited. The news always seems to be more of the same: political parties fighting, infrastructures crumbling, economies lagging, nations warring, natural disasters happening. It all just leaves me feeling worn down, to the point where I try to ignore it if I can.

I spend many of my waking hours trying to avoid the real world, losing myself in books, or surfing the internet for hours on end. Therein lies the problem: the internet. A place where anything might be true, and there are certainly going to be a few people who are insistent that it is true, even when it is false.

Yesterday, I was looking something up (I don't recall what exactly) and came across a discussion of the "BURIEDALIVE" glitch, a supposed glitch in Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue (the Generation I games). I say supposed as there is some disagreement over whether or not it is real. Some people are insistent that the whole thing is nothing more than a creepypasta (a horror story told and spread over the internet). I am not as certain about this, as I had seen a video someone had recorded in which they encounter, battle, and lose to BURIEDALIVE. I need to say this right now: if that video is a fake, it is a very well-made fake.

That's a big part of the problem. It's getting easier and easier to fake stuff. Photo- and video-editing software is much more accessible now than it was, say, fifteen years ago. Make it, fake it, pass it off as the real thing.

It isn't helping that there's the election coming up. Most political commercials are focused solely on attacking someone, and are frequently off, not to mention off-putting. A former teacher of mine once said that commercials are some of the least accurate sources of information about political candidates; people can say whatever the hell they want to in commercials, and they do! Your best bet for getting honest information is from debates.

But what then? I didn't watch the first political debate between the two presidential candidates, fearing what I would see. The following day, the newspaper confirmed my fears: the two candidates spent much of the debate making personal attacks on each other. The newspaper also looked at claims the candidates made in the debate, and how those claims stack up in real life. As it turns out, yes, they really did say that or no, they weren't fighting against this issue back in whenever they claim it was.

Is it really too much to ask for an honest, straightforward answer?

I guess it is.

But then again, given the state of things as they are now, I dread what such an answer might be.