There are some facts that we all just know. Whether we learned it from school, a friend, the internet, or whatever our source was. Here are just a few.

1. Coffee is made from beans

2. Chameleons change color to camouflage in their surroundings

3. One human year is always equivalent to seven dog years

4. Fortune cookies are a Chinese tradition

5. You have to wait 24 to 48 hours before reporting a missing person

6. Going out in the cold with wet hair will make you sick

7. Bulls are enraged by the color red

8. All penguins mate for life

You’re probably wondering why I rewrote these no-brainers because “duh, everyone knows this stuff.”

Actually, jokes on you. None of the points I’ve claimed are true.

Sorry to break it to you, but not all penguins mate for life (shockingly sad, I know). And chameleons? They change color as a response to mood, temperature, light, not the object they are touching. Meanwhile, the fortune cookie's origin is debatable between the United States and Japan. It definitely is not a Chinese tradition. Oh, and bulls are colorblind to red.

Now, these statements aren’t going to change your life. They aren’t going to affect your everyday routine. But, because we are so used to our surroundings always speaking the truth, we start to believe every little thing we hear. Now, I’m not saying that people are lying. What’s their source of information? For years, I couldn’t take morning showers because I would get sick if my hair was wet when I left my house. What I am saying is that automatically believing things has lead to the greatest epidemic: stereotypes.

White people are not all trashy and racist. Black people are not all thugs who love fried chicken. Arabs sure as heck are not all terrorists nor are they all belly dancers.

Believing things you’ve always thought to be true is so easy, but it has affected the way we’ve acted all our lives. Don’t just believe something someone’s told you, even the media. Did you not know? There’s a lot of fake news going around.