We all know we can’t believe everything we read online. People have vivid imaginations, and the internet is an endless cesspool of information that requires no fact-checking to share. Improvements in photoshopping technology and the increase in people who know how to hack and code has only made the world wide web less reliable, so it’s important to always take things with a grain of salt. But at the same time, we want to believe that things we see on social media are true. What incentive do these people have to lie, anyway?

Well, apparently, plenty of people feel the need to channel their inner Pinocchio and share blatantly false stories online. And that’s where the Untrustworthy Poptarts subreddit comes in. This group, which has amassed an impressive 174k members since 2016, is “for all those posts that make you question whether OP really did find those things in that stuff they bought or found. In other words, we know you staged those screenshots, OP,” the page’s moderators write. “You're fooling no one.” 

To learn more about the origins of this popular subreddit, we reached out to the group's creator, Russian_For_Rent on Reddit, and they were kind enough to have a chat with us. "I was scrolling Reddit one day and came upon this post of a common occurrence on /r/mildlyinteresting, saw that the sub did not exist, and simply created it," they shared with Bored Panda. "That post was popular enough that it got a healthy amount of traffic that day, and enough people stuck around that the sub was able to keep going."

The post in question, which was found 6 years ago, features someone claiming that they received three Poptarts in a package that’s only intended to contain two. It was immediately called out by viewers, with comments stating that it must have been staged. “How do we know you didn’t put a 3rd one in the pack?” But because the post gained plenty of traction, receiving over 37k upvotes, the Untrustworthy Poptarts subreddit was born. And it's been successful ever since, with the creator noting that, "The sub gets a decent amount of engagement for its size."

"Initially we were thinking what the best direction was to actually keep the sub going, rather than just for when people post stuffed Poptarts only, and then it was realized that there isn't really a staged photo sub," the creator went on to explain. "Except for maybe KarmaConspiracy, but that one's turned into basically just a meta joke of a subreddit. So this sub does that with a tiny bit of meta joke misbehavior every now and then too." 

We were also curious what Russian_For_Rent's thoughts were on why people attempt to pass off these photos as real. "The number one reason is attention, of course," they said. "Posting something ridiculous enough that people can give a slight benefit of doubt that it's not fake or perhaps doesn't even cross their mind that it is, makes for a great way to get engagement and attention on the internet. Some are definitely posted as jokes, which the poster does not realize," the creator added. "Usually if it's satire, it's pretty obvious, and the post normally wont get a ton of growth on the sub."

They also shared that some of their favorite posts from the group are OGs from when it first started, such as this one right here.

Today, there are only a few simple rules that members must follow, one of which being that Poptarts are not required. The mods also explain that the group is for untrustworthy content only, creativity is welcome, no photoshopping is allowed, no screenshots of stories are allowed, and members shouldn’t “be lame”. “Don't be the 211th person to passive aggressively use the word ‘sure’ in your title, and it'll make it much easier for someone to find your post by searching if you title it uniquely and/or descriptively,” the moderators write.

Now, I want to give some of these people the benefit of the doubt and guess that a handful of the posts that end up on Untrustworthy Poptarts were satirically shared online. I don’t know how anyone could possibly believe that they were real, so they must be trying to trick readers. But unfortunately, they can’t all be like that, and the subreddit seems to have unlimited content. So there are many people out there just trying to get away with lying online. In fact, social media users might be even less authentic than you realized. According to a study by Custard.com examining 80 online daters, less than 20% of the participants said their Facebook pages portrayed a “completely accurate reflection” of who they are. 

Another 2016 study featuring social media users found that less than one third of them say they’re always honest online, and up to 90% of them suspected that others are sometimes being dishonest about their age, gender, activities, interest, and/or appearance. It seems that misleading others on the internet is more of the rule than the exception. But for some reason, social media sites like Facebook appear to be the most honest places online, compared to dating sites and other online chat rooms.

"The reason for this is because these social media sites, we posited, have the most links to the outside world," Michelle Drouin, a psychology professor at Indiana University Purdue Fort Wayne and one of the authors of the study, told CBC News. "It's a lot harder to lie about your gender or your age, for example, when you have pictures of yourself, pictures of your family, and most importantly, shared acquaintances."  

And when it comes to why people tend to mislead others on the internet, Drouin says it’s typically an attempt to make ourselves look better. “They wanted to be cooler. They wanted to be more beautiful. They wanted to be sexier. They wanted to give an appearance of a life that was better than the life that they were leading," she told CBC News. But that wasn’t the only motivation. "Others said that they lied because they just thought everyone lies online. This is the place where lying is standard,” Drouin added.

Michael Arceneaux wrote a piece for NBC News titled ‘You’re not a Kardashian, so stop lying about your life on social media’ where he breaks down how annoying it can be to see our loved ones misleading viewers online. “Maybe you’re not the kind of person who wants to become an ‘influencer,’ but just someone who wants to come across as having a much better life than you claim to have,” Arceneaux writes. “Still, please consider the people in your lives: They have to wake up every morning and scroll through your lies hour after hour. It’s exhausting rolling our eyes that hard. (I know because I needed extra doses of caffeine just to get through this essay.)”

Arceneaux goes on to write for NBC News, “Still, even if you don’t consider the feelings of others (for shame), think about yourself: You are probably being clowned for every new fallacious posting,” Arceneaux goes on to write for NBC News. “You may not see the screenshots captioned with ‘Look at this liar!’ in group chats in which you’re not included, but believe me, your posts are there. I am not a fan of schadenfreude, but sometimes the lies are so bad that even I end up dabbling in that dark art before I mean to, which leads to me feeling immense guilt later. (As someone who grew up Catholic, I don’t need any more guilt in my life, so please, I'm begging you, stop the lies so I can't enjoy making fun of them.)”

There might not be any legal requirements to be honest online, but there are definitely benefits to being forthcoming. For one thing, people won’t be shocked or feel catfished when you meet them in person. You look exactly how they expected you to, and you are actually capable of having an intelligent conversation about the hobbies you claimed you participate in. This can also be useful in job interviews because, yes, it’s very possible that they checked out your social media prior to meeting you. Nobody wants to be caught off guard, so the best way to portray an authentic version of yourself online is to just be yourself online. Nobody will be disappointed if your cat isn’t capable of spilling water in a pattern that looks like a Van Gogh painting, I promise.  

At this point, I don’t know what to trust anymore on the internet. But it is nice to know that I know what not to trust, and that’s screenshots like these. I love a great fictional story as well, but I would never try to pass one off as the truth. We hope you’re enjoying this list of suspicious screenshots, pandas. Keep upvoting the ones you find particularly unbelievable, and feel free to share your thoughts on these ‘untrustworthy Poptarts’ in the comments below. Then, if you’re looking for another Bored Panda piece featuring things that definitely didn’t happen, contrary to what the people sharing them would say, check out this article next!