‘What started as a joke, but everyone took it seriously?’ – 17 laughing matters that got weirdly real

‘“Birds aren’t real” was started to mock conspiracy theories.’
-thescrapplekid

‘Die Hard is a Christmas Movie.

‘Movie came out in 1988 and it wasn’t until the late 2000s until people started arguing on the internet about whether it was or not. It was originally a tongue-in-cheek response to the annual question of “what is your favorite Christmas movie” and the response of Die Hard was to subvert expectations of the typical holiday movie answers. The movie came out in July and it took 20+ years for people to start discussing it as a Christmas film. But then people lost that it was a joke response and will now actually seriously argue for it as a Christmas film.’
-Liam90

‘Donald Trump running for public office.

‘Read that sentence a few times in a row and it gets more and more hilarious the more you think about it. Donald Trump, one of the world most self centered humans in the spotlight, a man famous for fucking over people and running businesses into the ground, somehow, running for public office as a public servant. Roflmao. Oh except the media treated him seriously and here we are’
-weristjonsnow

‘Schrodinger’s Cat.

‘Schrodinger put forward that thought experiment to highlight how stupid he though the whole concept was. But now it’s the example that everyone knows, and is used more than any to illustrate it.’
-banelord

‘Idaho

‘The name Idaho started as a hoax! In 1860, lobbyist George M. Willing proposed the name for a new western territory, claiming it was a Native American word meaning “Gem of the Mountains.” The problem? He appears to have made the whole thing up!

‘The name was later reused for Idaho Territory in 1863, and the joke stuck. Today, Idaho’s own historical sources confirm that the name was invented, not derived from a Native American phrase’
-racist-hotdog

‘Liking the Star Wars prequels. It was entirely started as a meme sub. It’s gotten so out of hand that people now try to revise history and claim they were never hated to begin with.’
-PriorFortune1

‘Flat Earth Theory’
-samdd1990

‘A surprising amount of slang. A lot of slang nowadays people start using ironically and then it actually becomes a part of their real vocabulary.’
-craigdahlke

‘The ok hand signal being a dog whistle for white power. Started as a joke on 4chan and people ran wild with it as something serious in 2019/2020 timeframe’
-Feartheezebras