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How one journalist accidentally turned fiction into fact

How one journalist accidentally turned fiction into fact

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The Daily Dot's EJ Dickson told a lie on the Internet, and it went on to be repeated by dozens of people and publications. The article opens with an explanation about how the writer and her best friend had embellished a Wikipedia entry about a well-known children's book character named Amelia Bedelia. "We were stoned out of our minds," she writes. The two had quietly added a remark about how Bedelia was inspired by a maid with a large hat collection. The Internet didn't question it. Dickson goes on to explore the hilarious results of her actions, and how easily such hoaxes can propagate in Wikipedia's fertile pages.