Believe It or Not #1: Like watching a 1930s TikTok feed

If you have about ten minutes and want to see what passed for 'viral content' in 1930, you should definitely give this a look. It is basically the ancestor of a YouTube shorts feed or a TikTok scroll.

History nerds and people who like random trivia will probably get a kick out of it. If you need a plot or characters you can actually care about, you will probably hate this.

Robert Ripley starts the whole thing off by showing his first-ever cartoon. He looks a little stiff on camera, like he’s not quite sure where to put his hands while he talks.

The first 'oddity' is a woman who can read eight words a second. It is honestly kind of stressful to listen to.

She blurs through a 200-word paper in 24 seconds. Her mouth moves so fast it almost looks like the film is glitching, but it’s just her. 🎙️

Then a lady calls him on the phone to complain about a trick he mentioned in the paper. She says you can't walk through a hole in a cigarette paper, so he tells her to come over.

She shows up immediately, which feels very staged and funny. He does the trick, and it’s one of those 'aha' moments that makes you feel a little silly for not figuring it out yourself.

The movie gets into some 'facts' that I am pretty sure are just wrong. He says Einstein flunked math, which is a total myth people still repeat today.

He also claims Abraham wasn't a Jew but a Babylonian. He says it with so much confidence that you almost don't want to check if he's right. 🤨

There is a segment about a miniature bedroom set built inside a bottle. I wish the camera lingered on it longer because it looked incredibly detailed for something so small.

The animation part is where it gets really weird. It shows a porcupine fish killing a shark by being swallowed and then eating its way out.

The animation is clunky, sort of like the stuff you see in The Wasp, but it gets the point across. It is a bit gruesome if you think about it too hard.

One drawing he does of a man with a projection on his forehead is... well, it’s definitely a product of its time. It feels a bit exploitative in that old-school sideshow way.

The whole thing ends with a small Chinese boy singing 'Hello Baby' in a high voice. It’s a very abrupt ending.

Like, the movie just stops. No real wrap-up or goodbye from Ripley.

It’s not exactly a 'movie' in the way we think of them now. It’s more like a collection of 'did you know?' facts thrown at a screen.

Some of it is probably fake, but that’s kind of the charm of the whole Ripley brand. It's a fun little piece of history to watch while you're eating lunch.