[hn_throwaway_99]

> The UVA rape story was blatantly obviously false to any male who read it

That feels like 20/20 hindsight. There were certainly plenty of males who did believe it. I'll fess up, I was one of them. I believed it for 2 main reasons:

1. The story was outlandish, but I thought "you'd have to be insane to lie about this, with this much detail". Well, yeah, in retrospect, insane people exist.

2. Since there was so much detail, I thought there was plenty of stuff that could have been easily vetted, and given Rolling Stone's reputation, thought "for sure they have researched this." I honestly didn't realize at the time about the story being "too good to vet" phenomenon.

Yes, I learned a valuable lesson about consuming information with a more critical eye, and mea culpa. But I know I definitely wasn't the only male who originally believed the story.

[HideousKojima]

At least for me, I immediately doubted the story and any of my friends that I discussed it with (most of whom hadn't actually read the article) did as well the moment I pointed out the broken glass. So probably a bit of bias on my part to assume everyone else felt the same way, sorry that you got taken in by their lies.