People have been sharing things the public gets spectacularly wrong about their area of expertise – 21 massive (and common) misconceptions
If you’ve ever watched a TV show or a film that features something about which you have a great deal of knowledge, you’ll know just how annoying it can be.
It isn’t just the entertainment industry that clings on to some glaring misconceptions, though. The ordinary person in the street can be pretty damned certain about things with not the slightest justification – apart from, perhaps, that they ‘saw it on the telly’.
Over on Bluesky, M. Nolan Gray asked a relevant question.
What's something that experts/practitioners in your field universally agree upon, but that remains a "hot take" among the general public?
— M. Nolan Gray 🥑 (@mnolangray.bsky.social) March 28, 2026 at 8:39 PM
There were far too many responses to put here, but these give a very clear picture of the sort of misinformation that some sectors have to put up with.
1.
The faithfulness of a book-to-movie adaptation is completely irrelevant to whether the adaptation is any good.
— Arturo Serrano 🇨🇴🤖👽🧙🦄 (@carturo222.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 9:51 PM
2.
Fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) need to be phased out, by middle of the next decade at the latest.
3.
For me, it's actually easier to run projects like Fesshole for real, and they're exactly what they say they are, which is the public submitting stuff, but a day doesn't go by without me reading someone saying "he makes them all up for engagement" It would be so much more work, it would be insane.
— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel.b3ta.com) March 29, 2026 at 9:34 PM
4.
Gen AI is here to stay and being a "no ai" person is an unsustainable position frequently pushed further and further into cult terretory
— Doll (@dollspace.gay) March 29, 2026 at 9:52 PM
5.
The majority of cybersecurity risk is your own employees not following policy, not “hackers” burning a zero-day to take over your random small business.
— Brandon Arcari (@barcari.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 5:43 AM
6.
Plant-based meats have a much better environmental footprint than conventional meats.
— Tom Bry-Chevalier🔸 (@tombrychevalier.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 8:53 PM
7.
The difference between an em dash, an en dash, a hyphen, and a minus sign is important.
— Liam Sprod (@liamsprod.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 9:37 PM
8.
Jack Ruby was an active mobster with the Chicago Outfit, running guns and drugs, and the idea he was just some nobody with no underworld ties is absurd
— Dan O’Sullivan (@osullyville.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 8:49 PM
9.
Suppose you're a contestant on a game show and you're shown three doors. There's a car behind one of them, and goats behind the other two….
— Moebius Stripper (@moebiusstripper.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 9:05 PM
10.
Archivists don't wear gloves when working with old books and paper, we just wash our hands beforehand. If we wear gloves we lose tactile sensation and run the risk of ripping the paper. (Gloves are for artifacts and film.)
— Steph (professional Iron Horse Girl) (@1863-project.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 9:13 PM
11.
The surprise is not the incident/outage, it's that anything on the Internet ever works at all. The amount of hard work/smarts/skill/expertise involved in everything that keeps it running is astounding.
— Colette Alexander (@colettecello.bsky.social) March 29, 2026 at 9:29 PM