Unlearning: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

It's time for some quick unlearning, and this one might hurt a bit. The huge island of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean isn't real. It doesn't exist. I mean, it's kind of real, but it doesn't look like this. It looks like this. You know that thing where somebody is making a point that you agree with, but then they lie and so it makes you both look bad? That's what's happening with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You've heard plenty about it on this app. It's a massive pile of trash. You could walk across it. It's twice the size of Texas. It's all your fault. The thing is, when you go to look for pictures, the pictures that you see are either close to the shore, so not the same trash, or they're like some trash. Those aren't great, but it's supposed to be twice the size of Texas, not once the size of Alexis. And the reason for that is that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a metaphor or a misunderstanding or a lie, depending on who you're talking to. There is a greater amount of plastic in a certain area because of the way the currents work, but it's not big plastic. It's tiny, tiny microplastic. There is a larger percentage of dissolved microplastic in the ocean in that area. It's not good, but you could swim through it and not notice. It's bad, and I hate it, but when you exaggerate a point that much, you accidentally end up proving the other point. When people find out, they don't believe anything anymore. It's like cannabis. There are real risks to using cannabis. For example, you might tell a story that seemed really funny at the time but is boring for the rest of us, but when you show reefer madness and it's like, this is going to make people do murders, then you lose those people, even if you had good points to make. That gets lost because of the lie.