Did you hear about Cooper Flagg? He went on “The View” and dressed down Whoopi Goldberg after she dismissed him as just another kid. Stick to layups, she said. Leave real-world issues to the grownups. He responded with eloquence far beyond his 19 years.

Did you hear Flagg also donated around $5 million to homeless shelters in Newport, his hometown? That money will be used to build 150 apartments and add 300 shelter beds to help keep Newport’s homeless off the frozen winter streets, and safe.

He also paid off the debts of his favorite janitor back at his old high school. The story didn’t say if the janitor is sweeping halls at Nokomis or Montverde Academy, the Florida prep school Flagg attended before moving on to his college season at Duke.

And Flagg also saved an animal shelter that was just days from closing, giving a second chance to dozens of dogs looking for a home. He even adopted one of them, Buddy, an 11-year old Labrador mix.

Amazing, right? Too good to be true?

That’s because they are. These stories, and probably others, have been circulating all over the internet, especially Facebook, where fabulists reign supreme. They are all fiction. Poorly written fiction, at that.

Flagg is hardly the first celebrity used by the AI hucksters to peddle nonsense. “The View” seems to be a regular prop in these stories, with some athlete or politician joining the stars on the set to share truths that until then were unknown to the universe.

They are 100%, Grade-A, certified prime North American road apples. Most of the fake news stories are generated from satirical social media accounts and sensationalized “insider” accounts.

There’s even a story out there that 73-year old Bill Belichick has a 24-year old girlfriend from Maine.

OK, that one is true, proving the absurd doesn’t need a jump start.

In the online world, clicks are currency. Truth and quality are a small obstacle. Veritas non refert. Truth doesn’t matter.

It’s easy to see how these nonsense stories can do laps around Maine’s social media landscape. The state has never seen anything like Cooper Flagg. We’ve had professional athletes, of course, and we’ve supplied the world with plenty of talented people in the arts, including writers and actors of some fair renown. Politically, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith stood up and told the country we’re not listening to Joseph McCarthy’s fearmongering any longer.

We’ve never produced the best college basketball player in the land before, though. We’ve never sent the top pick in the NBA draft out into the zeitgeist. Flagg is a new thing, one of a kind, and Mainers understandably want to claim a little ownership of that. With so much horrible stuff going on, Flagg’s budding basketball career is something everyone can rally around with pride.

By all accounts, Flagg is a good guy, a humble, grounded, hard-working athlete who cherishes his rural Maine roots. That’s a reason so many people support him. It’s a reason these fake stories can take root and spread like internet crabgrass.

We want to believe the best of Flagg. We want to think he’s the kind of guy who could rescue a shelter full of abandoned dogs. Or solve a region’s homeless crisis. Or pay off a hard-working man’s debts. Or even subtly tell off a talk show host on live television.

Flagg has arrived on the national scene, there’s no doubt about that. In the last week, he’s been the answer to a question on “Jeopardy,” stumping all three playing in the show’s annual Tournament of Champions, and he was the subject of a joke told by Michael Che during the Weekend Update segment of “Saturday Night Live.”

Watch enough sports, and you’ll see Flagg in a pretty funny new State Farm commercial. As he continues to improve in this rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks, Flagg’s profile climbs.

The hope is Flagg, his family, and his closest friends have a sense of humor about all of this. The hope is also that his fans become a little more careful, and employ a healthy dose of cynicism when they see a story about Flagg that passes nice and speeds into fantastic.

Made-up drivel doesn’t need help. Truth, on the other hand, is always playing from behind.