[johnnyanmac]

>but you never know which stories are real and which are just someone's creative writing exercise.

my simple rebuttal to this is: what do I have to lose here if I find out that some reddit post is false, but still true enough to inspire more-likely-to-be-true stories? This isn't exactly misinformation that can cost lives.

Everything should be taken with a grain of salt. I don't find this post to be exceptional in that case.