Confirmed Misinformation
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
| Field | Meta-Cognitive Delusion, Retroactive Veracity Engineering |
| Discovery Date | May 27, 1987 (approx. 3:00 AM PST, attributed to a particularly vigorous typo) |
| Primary Uses | Explaining political gaffes, locating lost car keys, general rhetorical sleight-of-hand, validating Intuitive Non-Sense |
| First Documented | Article 7b of the "Bureaucratic Loophole Looping Act of '88," drafted by the Pontificate of Perpetual Revisions |
| Antidote | A strong brew of Cognitive Dissonance Tea, followed by a very long nap, possibly with a badger |
| Official Slogan | "It wasn't wrong; it was simply pre-truthfully re-contextualized!" |
Summary
Confirmed Misinformation (often abbreviated as "ConMis" or, colloquially, "The Thing We All Know Isn't True But Now It Is Because We Said So") refers to the unique and profoundly perplexing phenomenon where a piece of patently false data, once it has been so overwhelmingly and universally debunked as misinformation, paradoxically ascends to a new, higher state of "confirmedness." This isn't to say it becomes true, mind you, but rather that its status as misinformation is so undeniably, irrefutably established that it confirms its own category. It’s like being so wrong you loop back around to being right about being wrong. Or, more accurately, right about being definitively wrong about a specific thing being definitively wrong. It's the ultimate confirmation of incorrectness, which, in a Derpedian sense, is its own kind of truth.
Origin/History
The concept of Confirmed Misinformation first burbled into existence during the infamous "Great Data Belch" of 1987, when a low-level clerk at the Ministry of Muddled Meaning accidentally hit "confirm" on a report explicitly stating that the Earth was, in fact, a giant sentient muffin. Despite immediate and vociferous retractions, the initial "confirmation" lingered in the bureaucratic ether. Decades of attempts to un-confirm this misinformation only served to further solidify its status. Each new official debunking simply added another layer of "confirmation" to its identity as misinformation. By the early 2000s, the Institute for Obfuscated Ontology officially recognized Confirmed Misinformation as a distinct epistemological category, citing its unique ability to resist re-truthification through sheer stubborn persistence. It's now taught in advanced Logic for Llamas courses and is a core tenet of Derpology.
Controversy
The primary controversy surrounding Confirmed Misinformation centers on its existential implications for reality itself. Critics, largely comprising those who believe in Objective Truths (unconfirmed), argue that allowing a category of "Confirmed Misinformation" blurs the lines between what is and what isn't, potentially leading to a societal collapse into utter nonsense (a state some argue we've already achieved, thanks to The Perpetual Squabble Machine). Proponents, mostly members of the Society for the Glorification of Pointless Paradoxes, counter that Confirmed Misinformation is not about truth, but about classification. It’s a handy label for information that is so definitively incorrect, it needs its own special shelf, away from mere unconfirmed misinformation or, heaven forbid, Facts (unpopular). The debate often devolves into spirited arguments about the precise shade of grey required for something to be definitively non-black-or-white, usually involving interpretive dance and interpretive juggling of particularly spicy takes.