Everyone’s talking about encyclopedias but they weren’t always that useful either. They can only fit so much information in those books so some topics would only get like 3 sentences dedicated to them. So yeah, if you were writing a research paper for school you’d spend lots of time at the library trying to find books that had another smidge of information you needed.

If you were lucky, you’d find a really good book that was very relevant to your topic and lean heavily on that. Otherwise, you’d wind up with like a few sentences each from a dozen books that you have to tie together somehow. Wasn’t fun.

It’s not the free fall that I’m worried about. It’s what comes after.

I think the context matters. Just reading the paper and ask someone what their sign is so you can laugh at the horoscope section? Not really a huge deal. First date and using it as an ice breaker to get someone to talk about themselves? Mayyyyybe. Treating it with any actual level of seriousness is definitely a danger zone.