"You can't trust the internet"
About this Quote
Spoken by an actress whose career has unfolded in the tabloid-to-Twitter-to-TikTok era, "You can't trust the internet" lands less like a technophobic scold and more like a survival tip from someone who has watched her own image get rewritten in real time. Sheridan’s bluntness is the point: it’s a sentence built to travel, ironically, on the very medium it warns against. That tension gives it bite.
The intent is protective and corrective. It’s not just "be skeptical"; it’s "assume the system is engineered to mislead you". Coming from a pop-culture figure, the subtext carries a double charge: the internet distorts facts, and it distorts people. Celebrity online is a funhouse mirror where half-truths, anonymous claims, and algorithmic amplification can harden into "common knowledge" overnight. Sheridan’s line reads like a response to that machine: the plot summary of a thousand misquotes, spliced interviews, and headline alchemy.
Context matters because actors are uniquely exposed to the internet’s incentives. Outrage performs. Certainty performs. Nuance tanks. When a performer pushes back with a simple, declarative rule, she’s reclaiming a sliver of authority in a culture that treats virality as verification.
It also works because it’s deliberately overbroad. Of course you can trust parts of the internet; the sentence isn’t a fact-check, it’s a posture. Sheridan’s rhetorical move is to reset the default from credulity to suspicion, urging the audience to remember that the feed is not reality, it’s a market.
The intent is protective and corrective. It’s not just "be skeptical"; it’s "assume the system is engineered to mislead you". Coming from a pop-culture figure, the subtext carries a double charge: the internet distorts facts, and it distorts people. Celebrity online is a funhouse mirror where half-truths, anonymous claims, and algorithmic amplification can harden into "common knowledge" overnight. Sheridan’s line reads like a response to that machine: the plot summary of a thousand misquotes, spliced interviews, and headline alchemy.
Context matters because actors are uniquely exposed to the internet’s incentives. Outrage performs. Certainty performs. Nuance tanks. When a performer pushes back with a simple, declarative rule, she’s reclaiming a sliver of authority in a culture that treats virality as verification.
It also works because it’s deliberately overbroad. Of course you can trust parts of the internet; the sentence isn’t a fact-check, it’s a posture. Sheridan’s rhetorical move is to reset the default from credulity to suspicion, urging the audience to remember that the feed is not reality, it’s a market.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sheridan, Nicolette. (2026, January 15). You can't trust the internet. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-trust-the-internet-115026/
Chicago Style
Sheridan, Nicolette. "You can't trust the internet." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-trust-the-internet-115026/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You can't trust the internet." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-trust-the-internet-115026/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
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