Whilst it has come to mean "a small fact" or "snippet of the information", the word "
factoid"
(coined by [Norman Mailer]
? in his 1973 biography of
Marilyn Monroe) originally had a different
and more subtle meaning.
The original meaning was a wholly spurious "fact" invented to create or prolong public exposure
or to manipulate public opinion.
Mailer himself described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a
magazine or newspaper".