(Bit of a thread drift, but:) "Romanticized dime novels were the clickbait of their time and were responsible for mythologizing the Old West" - there was a career-criminal and murderer (or to be more romantic, an "outlaw") hanged in Calgary, Alberta, in its early days - 1890s or early 1900s - who, on the gallows, attributed his misspent life to his "drinking whiskey and reading novels". The "Old West" was being mythologized before it was even old (as has often been noted).