Look at my pretty mermaid scales!

…and that’s a load of crap.

Those are my glittery fingernail polish chips that my daughter and I actually peel off and use to create make believe mermaid art. Do you know what the operative phrase of that sentence is?

Make believe.

I cannot express my distaste for these fake documentaries enough. It’s not that I don’t like fun stories about mythical creatures. Heck, I get paid to write them! I love them. But they don’t belong on a learning channel like Animal Planet. They belong on Sci-Fi. Or a movie channel. Anything but one of the channels that’s supposedly supposed to give us truth.

What’s the big deal, argue some of my friends. TLC hasn’t been about learning in a long time—even before Honey Boo-Boo stole the show. Everything is about reality TV and nothing is about actual, real life anymore, which is so, so sad. But to me, it gets even worse—because people actually believe this crap.

We live in the most advanced technological age and we can’t even bother to overcome our laziness to Google something to see if it’s real or not anymore. Instead, hundreds—maybe thousands—of people take to Twitter gasping and awing over mermaids, which are now “true.” It’s so bad that the White House had to issue an official statement saying that mermaids are not, in fact, real!

Folks, I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist, so you know that when something like this ruffles my feathers, it’s serious! I could go into how I feel this fits into our education system, but I’d rather not make myself even sadder and angrier than I am. I’d like to just ask Animal Planet to get off the whole anti-learning learning channel bandwagon, please. Do it for the sake of the children. Or the mentality of a nation. Or just my sanity. Whatever.

Photo courtesy of Sara S.