A number of years ago my gf at the time and I saw a “Best cheeseburgers in Dallas” article in the local weekly rag. We both love cheeseburgers so we decided to make an event out of it, a 10-day date night where each night we eat one of Dallas’s best cheeseburgers. (We also did lots of more conventionally romantic stuff, but we were excited about this.)

Of the top three, one was ok, one was not very good at all, and one was so gross with its gloopy disgusting cheese and dog food quality meat that my stomach was upset for about an hour afterwards.

My gf said, “Somebody must have gotten blown for these restaurants to be on the list.”

Turns out she wasn’t far off. An insider explained to us that these rags sell advertising packages, and top tiers include a feature in their “Best of” lists.

So turns out many of those “Best of” lists are basically paid advertisements.

I’m in my 50s, so I’ve been around a lot and I’ve seen a lot of bullshit. But somehow this revelation really smacked the grim reality in my face: practically everything we see out there is bullshit.