Every kid older than seven knows there is a difference between blatantly lying and stretching the truth. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your sense of humor), the people at Snapple are all under the age of five.
When you grab a Snapple from the Pit Stop or from the fridge near the Alpine Bagel, the jar looks innocuous enough. The drink is cold, the liquid is pink (or purple, or yellow, or whatever) and the glass is molded into a funky shape that rubs your palm as you stuff it in your backpack. The problem comes when you pop the lid and read the “Real Fact” printed inside and decide to wow everyone with your newfound knowledge.
(No, this has never happened to me. Why are you asking?)
Snapple has an entire website devoted to their “Real Facts” with digitized lids flipping across the screen to reveal the fun facts printed beneath.
Sometimes there’s a real one, like this little beauty:
#984: When creating a mummy, Ancient Egyptians removed the brain by inserting a hook through the nostrils. I took pictures of them in case you wanted those but if not we can just write down what they said instead
Other times there’s one that makes me question my personal identity:
#825: Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
And more often than not, there are the facts that are just too outrageous to be real:
#741: Plants, like humans, can run a fever if they are sick
At the end of the day, Snapple has found a brilliant marketing tool in their “Real Facts” because they make people want to buy a Snapple just to pull off the lid — and to drink their sweet tea or whatever it is you people buy.
But you don’t have to buy a Snapple to read some dubiously “Real” facts. If you want, you can create your own “Real Facts” from a formula that brought you random nail polish colors.
Step one: Noun or subject matter
Pick the weirdest or blandest thing you can think of. It doesn’t really matter whatever you choose because you can make it as crazy or wonderful as you see fit.
Step two: Make it do something
Whatever subject you’ve chosen for the first step, give it something to do. Make it climb a tree, make it surf, or make it die. Give your subject matter something to do and it will sound more like a fact and less like a random shout into the void.
Step three: Embellish
The level of craziness you want depends directly on the amount of embellishment you add. However, if you want anybody to read your facts instead of immediately dismissing them as the hogwash they probably are, you’ll want to speak from an authoritative point of view and pretend you’re serious even when you’re not.
Step four: Read them off to people with a straight face
This is key. If you laugh, the game is up and you’ll become that weird kid that shouts random stuff at people try to and be funny.
Now be free my “real” children. And did you know that a UNC student loses thirteen brain cells a minute compared to the national rate of 69?
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