Katherine Benjamin

How real is reality? Not very.

If your life is filled with money and groupies and fame, at some point people will start spreading fake stories about you. But with all the crazy gossip out there, here are some rumors about musicians that actually turned out to be true.

Many rappers try to convey a certain lifestyle of material success. These artists don't want to just talk about watches, jewels, and stacking paper. They also want to walk the walk, too. But it doesn't always work out like that. Here are some big-talking rappers who've gone totally broke.

Bonnie and Clyde are perhaps the most romanticized outlaws of all time. At a time when gangsters and bad guys were celebrities, they stood out. No one knows who Al Capone's or John Dillinger's lady friends were off the top of their heads; the fact that Bonnie and Clyde committed crimes as a couple made them special. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker met in 1930, and later went on a 21-month spree.

VH1 was originally supposed to be MTV for older people. Of course, this was back when MTV was actually music television. VH1 played all the slightly less cool popular music, and eventually they started mixing it up with Best Of countdowns and fun facts in Pop Up Video. When they began dipping their toes in TV shows, it was music-related stuff and documentaries.
At some point, all that went out the window.

Most athletes try to keep playing their sport until the bitter end. Sure, there's the money and the fame that would be hard to give up, but there's also the no-quitting attitude that coaches and overenthusiastic parents have beaten them over the head with since they were in kindergarten. It's one reason you usually see athletes try to play well past the time they should have thrown in the towel, after injuries, surgeries, and all kinds of hints that their glory days are behind them.

When you're a popular rock star, the success can seem endless. Churning out hit after hit means fans, fame, and enough money to keep you set for life. But with all that cash comes a million ways to lose it. There have been plenty of rockers who should have been rolling in it, who suddenly find themselves broke or even in bankruptcy court.

Since so many people pay attention to the deaths of stars, sometimes they notice strange patterns. A lot has been made of the theory that celebrity deaths come in threes, but on the weird scale that has nothing on the deaths of two or more famous people that have really unexpected similarities.

Most of us don't have to worry about being misquoted because we aren't famous and no one really cares what we say, no matter how many followers we might have on Twitter. But when you are well-known, being misquoted must be really annoying. People will start to think you believe whatever was allegedly said. And in the most extreme cases, these made-up quotes become a defining part of a person's image. So let's try to correct the record a little bit and figure out who actually said what.

When you were a kid, SeaWorld was like an aquatic circus, a happy place where animals did tricks for your amusement and you went home with a Shamu stuffed animal. But then the documentary Blackfish dropped and suddenly lots of people saw the theme parks as twisted prisons for poor innocent whales and other animals tortured into entertaining humans.
But there are more terrible things than even that movie showed. Here is a roundup of many of the sick and twisted stuff that happened at SeaWorld.

People all over the world dream of being pop stars, but perhaps nowhere else more than South Korea. While their northern neighbors are wondering where the next meal is coming from, South Koreans are obsessing over every detail of their K-Pop stars' lives and striving to be as much like them as possible. This regularly leads to really weird and creepy incidents, but those "lucky" enough to actually be an idol are still expected to appreciate it, no matter what hell they're put through.

The first lady has a complex job. She isn't paid and isn't even really an official position, but she has to always look perfect, represent her country well, and champion her own causes. We expect a lot from a person who only got there because someone she married happened to win an election.
But not all first ladies toed the line. Some of them found ways of being themselves in a manner that was a little un-first lady-like. Some of them were just outright weird.

Without geniuses, the world would look nothing like it does today. One brilliant person can change history, create amazing art, or simply do things us normies could only dream of. But the ironic thing is that the world might actually have been a much nicer place if some of the most intelligent and talented people of all time had never existed. Sure, anyone can be a jerk, but these big brains seemed to take it to the next level.

It's hard being a tourist. You're in an unfamiliar city or country, maybe you don't speak the language, and you're trying to cram in all the must-see things before you drop from exhaustion. This usually involves seeing famous works of art, some statues, maybe a fountain or two. And for most people this works out fine. They come, they see, they leave everything intact. But then there are the other tourists. Maybe bad luck follows them around or maybe they just have one moment of stupidity.

If the name doesn't ring any bells, Warren Jeffs has been the head of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints for the past decade and a half. The FLDS is a branch of Mormonism that broke off from the main group in 1890 when the main LDS group banned polygamy. The 10,000 or so practitioners live in Arizona, Utah, Texas, and Canada, and Jeffs is their prophet.
But the strangeness of this church-cult goes a lot deeper than that. Jeffs himself is a lawbreaking creep.