In this new era of fake news and alternative facts, writers are desperate for any sort of poignant phrase or literary reference to sum up the helplessness they feel looking at the world around them. One of the most common books inside people’s in-case-of-dystopia-break-glass emergency reference box is often George Orwell’s 1984, partly because it paints a grim picture of a world in which truth is meaningless and partly because it’s written at a ninth-grade reading level. However, if you’re going to run around quoting a book that’s about the dangers of pointed misinformation, you’d better make sure it’s a real quote and not somebody’s hilarious bit on Twitter.
This is precisely what happened in an article published by The Guardian on Wednesday that ended with the following supposed excerpt from Orwell’s novel in which the book’s protagonist, Winston, is given a harsh lesson on the subjectivity of truth and the size of trains:
Big brother smirked, “Facts are whatever I say they are. For example, trains are small. Really small. You could fit a train in the palm of your hand.”
“That’s not true,” spluttered Winston. “I was on a train yesterday. It’s the biggest damn thing I’d ever seen.”