Tumblr - spreading rumors about pop culture

Today, I was scrolling through my news feed on Facebook and came across this “quote”:

“Yes, it’s rather funny, really, that next to no-one realised the snake that Harry set free in Philosopher’s Stone turned out to be Voldemort’s final Horcrux, Nagini.”

— J.K. Rowling

Obviously, this kind of thing is a pretty big deal for those of us who have grown up reading the books - how could we have missed that?

However, we’ve also grown up with the Internet, and the possibly most important thing to know about the internet is that you can’t trust everything you read there, so, naturally, I investigated…on the internet.

I found an online message board (suuuuper reliable, I know) discussing the quote. Apparently, it’s just a rumor started on Tumblr, and it literally cannot be true.

According to Noah James Gibney, one of the posters,

yeah I saw that too. Someone literally plucked it out of thin air and it spread like wildfire, unfortunately if something is on tumblr it seems to become ‘fact’ whether it’s been proven or not.

These people know their stuff. Many users pointed out that the snake Harry released was a male boa constrictor, and Nigini is a female python. Their facts checked out (again…on the internet).

Thank goodness, a false alarm. My childhood remains unchanged.

Moral of the story: Don’t trust everything you read on the Internet.