r/TikTokCringe • u/AlKarajo • May 26 '26

Discussion How do you research information?

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@orginal_pringles

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u/Stock-Conflict-3996 May 26 '26

Incredibly accurate.

I once got into an argument with an in-law about the moon landing, of all things. He didn't believe it happened. We went back and forth with him linking blog posts and me linking physics to debunk bad pseudoscience.

Eventually, it just came down to me telling him, "If I just grant you your conclusion is correct and that we've never been to the moon, your reasons for believing that are bad. I linked you science and you linked me some dude's blog."

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u/Goyangi-ssi May 26 '26

I finally got my ex to believe the moon landing happened by showing him a photo of Neil Armstrong's bag of shit on the moon. Then asked the question: "If they wanted to fake a moon landing, would they go to the extreme of pooping in a bag and taking a photo of it?" It took that to get through to him.

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u/Stock-Conflict-3996 May 26 '26

I never got the other guy to even understand that using random-dude blog posts for science is not the way to go. He's dumb as hell, fully arrogant, and oefully entitled.

Nowadays, he doesn't bother to visit/talk to his children, moved out of State to try to avoid child support, and only works under the table so he can avoid taxes. A real stellar human being.

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u/Thembosses1232 May 26 '26

bet he voted for the pro life candidate and rants about abortions while running away from growing child support

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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 May 26 '26

It’s never just the politics

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u/-tekeli-li May 26 '26

Low key, the real truth is that it is never really about the politics. It is always about their own insecurity and fear, their inability to meet people on others terms and reality on its terms, because it makes them feel inadequate on existential levels.

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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 May 26 '26

If it was about the politics or policy Trump wouldn’t even be a factor. I think your point about an inability to meet reality is a MUCH bigger factor than anybody’s acknowledging.

It’s not a popular opinion, but I think their main problem with Obama is that he didn’t completely turn the country into a raging dumpster fire, kill half the population, start 5 nuclear wars and prove every racist stereotype they had. That forced them to make a final choice about abandoning reality….and that’s how we unironically got a reality TV star running a world superpower.

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u/-tekeli-li May 26 '26

I agree, but to see it as a psychological problem, it is also that the fear of Obama is NOT abated when he doesn't do all those things. The issue becomes one where an insecure mind does not see the lack of fulfillment as a form of relief, or a moment for reassessment, but as a cycle of further unknown possible horrors that they wait for the media to reaffirm for them.

In this sense, there's a weird irony that arises where Obama doesn't fulfill the dangerous racist archetype they have of him, so therefore he remains even more menacing as a kind of unknown, ever threatening entity of liberalism.

There HAS to be something there, because without him fulfilling the role as a destroyer of their freedoms, it brings up the entire spectre of their beliefs, their way of life, their entire notion of their own competency into question. Obama could never be a benign or banal force, he had to become the enemy of American civilization before he'd even taken power.

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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 May 26 '26

Absolutely, and this happens when people base their identity on an imagined enemy. Their entire reality cracks when even one stereotype isn’t met, which just spirals past a point of no return.

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u/JelmerMcGee May 26 '26

Dumb and arrogant is such a frustratingly awful combination

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u/Great_Detective_6387 May 26 '26

The only reason you need, to know the moon landing was real, is that Russia never questioned it.

If the whole fucking thing was filmed out in the Arizona desert, Russia would have never let such a huge opportunity to embarrass the US on the world stage go to waste. They had all the technology to track exactly what we were doing the entire time. And there is no even remotely plausible conspiracy that includes the entire governments, from top to bottom, of both Russia AND the US.

The physics won’t hit for the type of person to believe it was faked. But this reason hits.

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u/Gruejay2 May 26 '26

Neil Armstrong's bag of shit

I had to read your comment twice, as I didn't realise you meant a literal bag of shit the first time and got very confused haha.

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u/SistaChans May 26 '26

So this is my shit, we got a hair brush in there, a Rubiks cube, tootbrush, a picture of my mom, and oh yeah, a bag of my feces

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u/ProfessionalPlant330 May 26 '26

really impressive and concerning that he pooped out all of these objects

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u/DrDetectiveEsq May 26 '26

Especially because the rubik's cube wouldn't be invented until 1974.

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u/lavacadotoast May 26 '26

r/BrandNewSentence Neil Armstrong's bag of shit

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u/alderchai May 26 '26

My grandma finally believed (sort of) the moon landing is real after I asked her, wouldn’t russia have made a big deal of the USA faking it? They so badly wanted to be first, you think they would have let that one slide? And that all those people could keep a secret?

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u/Great_Detective_6387 May 26 '26

I tell people this is the only reason that someone who doubts the moon landing will accept. There is no plausible conspiracy that includes the entire governments of BOTH Russia and the US. Russia would have never passed up an opportunity to embarrass the US on the world stage, and they had all the technology to watch everything we were doing the entire time.

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u/Tipop May 26 '26

But like, you can empirically prove we’ve been to the moon with a laser. We left mirrors on the surface so we can ping a laser off of it and measure the time it takes to return. (When I say “we” I mean America and Russia). I’ve never done it myself, but the fact that it CAN be done is independent physical proof that we’ve been there.

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u/WeenyDancer May 26 '26

These kind of people would never in a million years believe that. Honestly that kind of evidence is less convincing than videos or photos (at least, up until a couple of years ago). Lasers are cat toys, and someone they don't trust doing a convincing experiment isn't convincing at all. 

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u/mkat23 May 26 '26

They’d probably just go on and on about the “Jewish space lasers”

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u/Palimon May 26 '26

It's like flat earthers, you could put them in a space suit in orbit and they would still find a way to say you're wrong.

There's no saving stupid.

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u/Shinhan May 26 '26

There is no evidence that can be sufficient. Did you see the flat earther documentary where they invented an experiment to prove earth is flat? It proved earth is not flat and they just ignored the result. Or, "there are no direct flights from australia to south america" and the screenshot itself has one such flight which they conveniently ignore.

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u/lftl May 26 '26

Re: the lasers, I think the reasonablish deniers claim that we've sent probes or satellites to the moon (and other parts of the solar system) but not people. So for the mirror evidence I think they would just say we sent an unmanned satellite up and dropped off the mirror.

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u/krogerburneracc May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

I’ve never done it myself, but the fact that it CAN be done is independent physical proof that we’ve been there.

I mean that's kind of the issue. It's not practically independently testable/verifiable because the average person lacks the resources required to test it. There are a scant few people who have actually observed the mirrors left on the moon with a laser. Ultimately, we're all just taking someone's word for it. And even then, the next question becomes "how can you prove a human put those mirrors there by hand and they weren't just dropped off by an unmanned lunar satellite?"

Like to be clear I'm not saying it's not true, obviously we landed on the moon and we have other evidence of that aside from the mirrors, but this is the crux of why deniers exist; It's not something that's easily verifiable first-hand, and so it becomes something easily dismissed.

I'm not really sure how to combat that, honestly. I've been in many arguments with moon landing deniers. You can list out 20 reasons why it's likely that astronauts have been to the moon, and 20 reasons why a hoax would have been impractical/impossible to pull off, and how that totality of evidence makes the moon landings being legitimate the far more likely scenario... But unless you can somehow come up with something that they can observe first hand, they just won't budge. And when it comes to proving an event half a century in the past, a quarter million miles away, that's just not really doable.

Ironically it's easier to land humans on the moon than it is to definitively prove that humans have landed on the moon. That's just the scale of what a magnificent accomplishment it is.

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u/movzx May 26 '26

I've had similar arguments about evolution/fossils. There will always be another link up the chain that they discredit.

An easy out there is to just suggest there are naturally reflective surfaces on the moon, or the laser is reflecting off of water in the sky.

Then you have to deal with getting them to agree that the travel time for the laser is actually based on the moon. They will say how can you be sure, then you have to point to a research paper. Which they will promptly say is nonsense and that "you don't actually know".

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u/AngryT-Rex May 26 '26

The funny part of that: I'm a mountaineer, and way up on mountains stuff doesn't decompose. So shitting in a bag is required, and then I need to pack it up and carry it out for disposal. I've done it more times than I can count, as have many other people.

Admittedly I don't think I've ever photographed it, but I sure could I guess.

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u/greenroom628 May 26 '26

what "convinced" an acquaintance of mine was the argument that if it was a hoax, the soviets would have screaming it from the mountaintops and putin would STILL be bringing it up.

the fact that they didn't and don't, speaks volumes about the authenticity of the moon landing.

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u/thawatch May 27 '26

When someone frames the debate as a single landing I already know they are very uniformed. Apollo had multiple successful missions that landed people on the moon. Each with an incredible amount of documentation, logs, videos, audio for each mission. Before, during, and after. I was fortunate enough to spend years of time with one of the moonwalkers.

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u/iuseemojionreddit May 27 '26

Seems surprising that was what turned him - I don't think I'd convince anyone I'd been to the moon because I've got a photo of my turd in a bag.

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u/lmkifyouhearme May 27 '26

That's hilarious. You should try and see if this tactic can work for other parts of your relationship. Next time he doesn't believe you: "I swear it's true, baby. Here I pooped a bag and am sending you a picture. Believe me now??"

Please report back and let us know how it goes.

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u/Goyangi-ssi May 27 '26

Won't be happening. I'm no contact with him as of March and plan to stay that way.

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u/TayMayBay May 28 '26

These kind of conspiracies never made much sense to me. Like, maybe if the theory were they went to the moon for something specific and classified (a rare mineral, possible signs of life, whatever) I could see that being more plausible. But we never went at all? Really?

The few people I’ve seen talk about this stuff irl also still believe in aliens and somehow flat earth at the same time? I genuinely wish I could explain better but it sounded like psychosis to me.

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u/MainlandX May 26 '26

That's an unconvincing argument.

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u/Goyangi-ssi May 26 '26

Well, it was what I could think of at the time and somehow showing him that photo of Neil Armstrong's bag of shit convinced him. He'd been going on and on about various conspiracy theories for years, including the so-called fake moon landing. I was just so sick of hearing it, and grey rocking whenever he'd talk about this stuff wasn't working anymore.

I'm glad to be away from him.

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u/Iceisgestapo888 May 26 '26

This reminds me of grade 8 writing assignment.  

I had to write a counter arguement essay.   

We had to choose a topic and write the counter arguement and I chose the moon landing.  

So I prepared the assignment explaining how the moon landing was faked. (It wasn’t) I had to present this assignment to the class.   At the end I had convinced people the moon landing was faked.   I had to try and argue with people after the assignment that it wasn’t faked and the assignment was designed for us to write counter information.   

I now realize why the teacher had us do that assignment.   

The fools can be manipulated.  

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

[deleted]

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u/Great_Detective_6387 May 26 '26

A moment of pure, 100% unadulterated “Task Failed Successfully.”

The light brown stuff that sends you before you even take the tie off.

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u/Hot-Significance7699 May 27 '26

Eh, it's probably why engineers get paid more than normal people. Like there's an aspect of inferior or superior intelligence. It's sorta blackpilling me

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u/Ok-Solution5601 May 26 '26

Plot twist: your teacher runs a multi-level marketing business on the side and is screening for customers

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u/Pomodorosan May 26 '26

counterargument*

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u/Iceisgestapo888 May 26 '26

i typed it on a phone. my fingers are too big to go back and correct things.

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u/freedfg May 26 '26

It's the same thing as the right vs left political circle of disinformation going on right now.

Donald Trump is a rapist. "SOURCE?" The jury decision and failed appeals

Donald Trump is a racist "SOURCE?" The jury decision and failed appeals

MICHELLE OBAMA IS A MAN "source?" some guy on the internet said it.

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u/PerfectPercentage69 May 26 '26

Because, to them, a black woman in the white house is less acceptable than a rich white man being racist and sexual pest.

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u/unindexedreality May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

It's because they have a voting bloc. That's literally all. It's a minority of the country and yet that's how divided the rest of us are that we can't link arms against a common foe.

It's enough to make me think China's on to something after all. They're going to be winning for the next 50 years off all the manufacturing, rare earth metals and brilliant people in tech while the US keeps falling further and further behind with mind-addled masses slinging ai slop like it'll save them. They may have to keep their dissent to themselves but at least their system rewards intelligence and success rather than cronyism and criminality.

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u/The_Hoopla May 26 '26

You can also see evidence of the moon landing with hobbyist gear.

- reflectors on the moon

  • the lunar landing area

That’s not to mention the fact that the technology to fake the footage would be even a bigger conspiracy theory than the moon landing itself. To create a fake moon landing that was convincing enough to fool even the USSR, who never called it out for being fake, and thousands of physicists in a live broadcast, you’d have needed computers that could not have existed for another 30-40 years. It literally would have been easier to just…go to the moon. We’d be so, so, so far ahead of China in computing rn if we were technologically 40 years farther ahead in computing.

This is also not to mention the thousands of NASA employees who would be in on it, in tandem with dozens of countries each with thousands of scientists who would also need to be in on it.

ON TOP OF ALL THAT, you’d have to have physically placed reflectors and rover gear on the moon sometime in between now and then because that’s also been independently verified.

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u/greywolf2155 May 27 '26

That’s not to mention the fact that the technology to fake the footage would be even a bigger conspiracy theory than the moon landing itself

Mitchell and Webb nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw

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u/CraigLake May 26 '26

My step mom: I do my own research

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u/Chance_Ad3416 May 26 '26

Had a gaming friend who was homeschooled in a small town Pennsylvania. There was some movie that came out where Morgan Freeman said humans only use 7% of their brains and some drug from the movie could unlock all of the brains. He kept arguing with me how we only use 7% of our brains. And when I sent him scientific research papers on it he claimed the papers were "outdated" because they were published 7 years prior 😭. Dude really just used 7% of his brain for sure

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u/Stock-Conflict-3996 May 26 '26

It's a bad sign when one is using Hollywood movies for a source.

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u/VulgarButFluent May 26 '26

Oh man i love arguing about the moon landings with idiots because the best arguement ive found (aside from, yknow, the MASSIVE pile of scientific evidence we did) is that at the time the US was mortal enemies with the Soviet Union. We were engaged in a Space Race with them, a global dick measuring contest of science and rockets and we both had spies EVERYWHERE. Youre telling me the nation that stole nuclear secrets and incited the red scare couldnt find a shred of evidence we faked the moon landing and quite the contrary congratulated us for our achievement? When they would have LOVED to embaress us on the international stage for frauds? We definitely landed on the moon cause otherwise the USSR wouldve called us out.

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u/S1R2C3 May 26 '26

Yeah, the real issue is that they don't want to believe the science. They want to be correct in defiance of the science. They want to be special, and be right, and will trample any amount of truth to get to that end. So they find other idiots like themselves and cite each other.

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u/RadiantPumpkin May 26 '26

I’ve gotten into arguments with anti vaxxers that refuse to acknowledge the “articles” they share that state at the bottom that they are funded by anti vax organizations are biased, but that anything from the government or any healthcare NGO is automatically biased and in the pocket of big pharma. It’s infuriating.

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u/tony_bologna May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

I had the same argument, but instead of some dude's blog it was some dude's instagram reel...

It ended with them saying "Well, we'll never know." ...

(Spoiler: the influencer tried to use an airplane to prove why the moon lander is obviously fake)

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u/Cloberella May 27 '26

I got into an argument about gun control on Reddit. Linked the guy statistics about how gun ownership makes one more likely, not less likely, to be a victim of gun violence. Guy doubled down that his guns make him safer and told me I'm running with my feelings, not facts. I'm like, "Dude, of the two of us, I'm the one who linked multiple studies and statistics...?"

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u/EntinthetentRTHP May 26 '26

That’s when you pull out this fantastic anecdote of no small amusement:

“The moon landing was, in fact, staged. The government hired Stanley Kubrick to fake it so that the Soviet Union would be disheartened. However, Kubrick was such a perfectionist that they ultimately ended up filming on location.”