Wisdom from No. 1 December 18, 2013 5:47 AM Subscribe
I was expecting "by Jonathan Frakes".
not kidding
posted by Flunkie at 6:03 AM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
not kidding
posted by Flunkie at 6:03 AM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
The Slate piece Matt links is worth a read:
...Come on—screw this. Elan Gale successfully hoaxed the Internet with a dumb, mean story. BuzzFeed fell for the hoax, with Zarrell tweeting at Gale to ask for an interview but never confirming anything about the flight. Any news organization should consider this a screw-up.
It’s not quite Lara Logan nodding like a parrot as her Benghazi source lies to her, but it’s the sort of shoddy reporting that would get a reporter at a small newspaper fired. Imagine you worked at the Pleasantville News-Leader and you ran an A-1 story about a fight that never happened. It goes viral; it gets debunked.You think you’re able to just walk away from that by mocking the haters?
...I'm a little disturbed by the glib response from BuzzFeed. What is aggregation for, anyway?....Zarrell’s story wouldn't have gone viral if she'd decided that Gale's story was too flimsy to run with. She wouldn’t have gotten 1.4 million hits. She would be, today, a less valuable employee to BuzzFeed, and someone at ViralNova or the Huffington Post (which also swallowed the story) would be more valuable.
This is fairly messed up.
posted by mediareport at 6:27 AM on December 18, 2013 [6 favorites]
...Come on—screw this. Elan Gale successfully hoaxed the Internet with a dumb, mean story. BuzzFeed fell for the hoax, with Zarrell tweeting at Gale to ask for an interview but never confirming anything about the flight. Any news organization should consider this a screw-up.
It’s not quite Lara Logan nodding like a parrot as her Benghazi source lies to her, but it’s the sort of shoddy reporting that would get a reporter at a small newspaper fired. Imagine you worked at the Pleasantville News-Leader and you ran an A-1 story about a fight that never happened. It goes viral; it gets debunked.You think you’re able to just walk away from that by mocking the haters?
...I'm a little disturbed by the glib response from BuzzFeed. What is aggregation for, anyway?....Zarrell’s story wouldn't have gone viral if she'd decided that Gale's story was too flimsy to run with. She wouldn’t have gotten 1.4 million hits. She would be, today, a less valuable employee to BuzzFeed, and someone at ViralNova or the Huffington Post (which also swallowed the story) would be more valuable.
This is fairly messed up.
posted by mediareport at 6:27 AM on December 18, 2013 [6 favorites]
I love that there was an FPP about every link in the third paragraph.
posted by griphus at 6:30 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by griphus at 6:30 AM on December 18, 2013
Wait-- I assumed the baby was a fake, but was the "birth" actually caught on Street View or not?
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:32 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:32 AM on December 18, 2013
This thesis bothers me. Does it not lead us to a place where nothing is real, or at least where the reality of what we're presented with is irrelevant? Isn't it equally true then to say, Even if it's real, it's fake?
posted by Naberius at 6:34 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by Naberius at 6:34 AM on December 18, 2013
sorry mathowie, but that is one steaming buttload of bullshit.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:39 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:39 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Naberius: Isn't it equally true then to say, Even if it's real, it's fake?
I think the point is, if you are using it as entertainment (which is really what most "news" is these days) does it really matter one way or the other? How does your interaction with the story of the Awful Airline Passenger materially change depending on it's veracity? I agree with mathowie totally.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:43 AM on December 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
I think the point is, if you are using it as entertainment (which is really what most "news" is these days) does it really matter one way or the other? How does your interaction with the story of the Awful Airline Passenger materially change depending on it's veracity? I agree with mathowie totally.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:43 AM on December 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
How does your interaction with the story of the Awful Airline Passenger materially change depending on it's veracity?
I think the problem for many of us is the assumption behind your question - that regularly using news stories solely for entertainment to the point where your interaction doesn't "materially change" if those stories are true or false - easily leads to a world where truth doesn't matter to anyone at all.
(Which is bad.)
posted by mediareport at 6:50 AM on December 18, 2013 [5 favorites]
I think the problem for many of us is the assumption behind your question - that regularly using news stories solely for entertainment to the point where your interaction doesn't "materially change" if those stories are true or false - easily leads to a world where truth doesn't matter to anyone at all.
(Which is bad.)
posted by mediareport at 6:50 AM on December 18, 2013 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I should explain this a bit. This journalism outfit asks people every year to say something edgy about the upcoming year in journalism and in the past I've done some fairly mundane prediction type stuff. I know this one is a bit goofy and I was purposely being a little cheeky with my viewpoint.
Part of this came from taping the last podcast -- we were recapping a bunch of stories and it was five things in a row where we were saying "later that turned out to be a hoax" followed with "well, not exactly, there was another update..." and I couldn't help but notice so many things in the last month followed this pattern but in the end you couldn't (except for that lame guy on a plane fighting with a fake woman story) say they were totally definitively hoaxes, and I thought that was an interesting new space for things to fall into.
I forgot to mention this story about the "what it's like to be poor" blog post (also linked here). It was a good essay about how tough life is with minimum wage and falling through the cracks but then maybe it's not so simple but a followup interview with the subject of it still leaves things murky.
The bottom line is I'm not trying to say if every Kaycee Nicole story turns out to be a hoax, that it's somehow OK because hey, we got to talk about important issues. Instead I was shooting for "Wow, the world is getting way complicated and these stories spread through social media are having some complex endings somewhere that isn't just pure truth or hoax, but maybe that's alright and something we need to get used to?"
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:51 AM on December 18, 2013 [13 favorites]
Part of this came from taping the last podcast -- we were recapping a bunch of stories and it was five things in a row where we were saying "later that turned out to be a hoax" followed with "well, not exactly, there was another update..." and I couldn't help but notice so many things in the last month followed this pattern but in the end you couldn't (except for that lame guy on a plane fighting with a fake woman story) say they were totally definitively hoaxes, and I thought that was an interesting new space for things to fall into.
I forgot to mention this story about the "what it's like to be poor" blog post (also linked here). It was a good essay about how tough life is with minimum wage and falling through the cracks but then maybe it's not so simple but a followup interview with the subject of it still leaves things murky.
The bottom line is I'm not trying to say if every Kaycee Nicole story turns out to be a hoax, that it's somehow OK because hey, we got to talk about important issues. Instead I was shooting for "Wow, the world is getting way complicated and these stories spread through social media are having some complex endings somewhere that isn't just pure truth or hoax, but maybe that's alright and something we need to get used to?"
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:51 AM on December 18, 2013 [13 favorites]
I remember reading part of a grad student's paper on a similar topic, where it discussed a widely-circulated photo of a smiling American soldier in Afghanistan standing behind a little Afghani kid who was holding up a piece of paper with English writing. There were two versions: one said (roughly) "Sgt. Whatever Saved My Life" and the other said "Sgt. Whatever Killed My Family." At least at the time when the paper was written, no one had any idea which was the real one.
posted by griphus at 6:51 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by griphus at 6:51 AM on December 18, 2013
How does your interaction with the story of the Awful Airline Passenger materially change depending on it's veracity?
By this token, This American Life never needed to retract their episode about Mike Daisey's (faked) visit to Shenzhen. Fiction and its appeal can reveal things to us about ourselves and how the world works, but a thing that happened is a thing that happened, and from which we extract meaning from differently based on how it happens.
The awful airline passenger story, if true, says something about how people really act on planes. As a piece of fiction, it tells us that this is a piece of whimsy that appeals to some of our assumptions/personal experience/other factual information we have acquired about how people act on planes.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:52 AM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
By this token, This American Life never needed to retract their episode about Mike Daisey's (faked) visit to Shenzhen. Fiction and its appeal can reveal things to us about ourselves and how the world works, but a thing that happened is a thing that happened, and from which we extract meaning from differently based on how it happens.
The awful airline passenger story, if true, says something about how people really act on planes. As a piece of fiction, it tells us that this is a piece of whimsy that appeals to some of our assumptions/personal experience/other factual information we have acquired about how people act on planes.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:52 AM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
Part of this came from taping the last podcast -- we were recapping a bunch of stories and it was five things in a row where we were saying "later that turned out to be a hoax" followed with "well, not exactly, there was another update..." and I couldn't help but notice so many things in the last month followed this pattern but in the end you couldn't (except for that lame guy on a plane fighting with a fake woman story) say they were totally definitively hoaxes, and I thought that was an interesting new space for things to fall into.
Instead of "hoax", try "prank". Or "troll".
posted by Going To Maine at 6:53 AM on December 18, 2013
Instead of "hoax", try "prank". Or "troll".
posted by Going To Maine at 6:53 AM on December 18, 2013
Yeah, I'm sorry I mentioned the airline passenger story because that was pure hoax by a total jerk of a human being (I hated reading how people found the story "hilarious" because it just seemed super mean and aggressive of him if it was real). I was shooting for more murky stories.
BTW, this other story about tourists using fake backdrops for photos is another favorite weird "Even if it's fake it's real" thing. It's a weird situation, they came up with an odd solution, and in the end there's some flavor of fakery happening but who gets hurt? People get better photo memories (that aren't exactly real memories?). The whole situation boggles my mind a bit.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:55 AM on December 18, 2013 [3 favorites]
BTW, this other story about tourists using fake backdrops for photos is another favorite weird "Even if it's fake it's real" thing. It's a weird situation, they came up with an odd solution, and in the end there's some flavor of fakery happening but who gets hurt? People get better photo memories (that aren't exactly real memories?). The whole situation boggles my mind a bit.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:55 AM on December 18, 2013 [3 favorites]
Going To Maine: The awful airline passenger story, if true, says something about how people really act on planes.
But even if fake, people do really act like that (and worse) on planes. And even if true, you're never getting the whole story, just the version whoever is reporting the story is trying to tell you.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:56 AM on December 18, 2013
But even if fake, people do really act like that (and worse) on planes. And even if true, you're never getting the whole story, just the version whoever is reporting the story is trying to tell you.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:56 AM on December 18, 2013
BTW, this other story about tourists using fake backdrops for photos is another favorite weird "Even if it's fake it's real" thing. It's a weird situation, they came up with an odd solution, and in the end there's some flavor of fakery happening but who gets hurt? People get better photo memories (that aren't exactly real memories?). The whole situation boggles my mind a bit.
FWIW, staging photos is a running theme in some parts of Chinese(-American) culture. Wedding photos shot separately from the wedding day, and/or in front of backdrops that depict, say, Paris.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:04 AM on December 18, 2013
FWIW, staging photos is a running theme in some parts of Chinese(-American) culture. Wedding photos shot separately from the wedding day, and/or in front of backdrops that depict, say, Paris.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:04 AM on December 18, 2013
Not that other people don't stage photos as well.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:04 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:04 AM on December 18, 2013
But even if fake, people do really act like that (and worse) on planes.
I think that this is my point. Sure, people act badly on planes, and a story about people acting badly on planes has great appeal because we can relate to it. But that doesn't make the story the equivalent of any of those true things that actually happened.
If I learnedthat folks were agitating for better treatment for stewards and stewardesses because of that story I'd be outraged, because it isn't evidence of anything. If I learned that folks were agitating for better treatment of stewards and stewardesses because, after reading that story, they found a bunch of sourced stories that were true and demonstrated that airline workers had a bad deal, I'd be delighted.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:14 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I think that this is my point. Sure, people act badly on planes, and a story about people acting badly on planes has great appeal because we can relate to it. But that doesn't make the story the equivalent of any of those true things that actually happened.
If I learnedthat folks were agitating for better treatment for stewards and stewardesses because of that story I'd be outraged, because it isn't evidence of anything. If I learned that folks were agitating for better treatment of stewards and stewardesses because, after reading that story, they found a bunch of sourced stories that were true and demonstrated that airline workers had a bad deal, I'd be delighted.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:14 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry, but is mathowie's photo an intentional post-modern callback to the 40-Year-Old Virgin or not?
Because I haven't even seen the movie and it seems obvious.
posted by Mezentian at 7:20 AM on December 18, 2013 [5 favorites]
Because I haven't even seen the movie and it seems obvious.
posted by Mezentian at 7:20 AM on December 18, 2013 [5 favorites]
I was sure the baby story was fake when the eagle swooped down and carried the baby off by the umbilical cord. And then of course it turned out to be true.
posted by pracowity at 7:25 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by pracowity at 7:25 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
FWIW, staging photos is a running theme in some parts of Chinese(-American) culture. Wedding photos shot separately from the wedding day, and/or in front of backdrops that depict, say, Paris.
Not only backdrops, but the partners will fly to distant locales to take wedding shots even before the ceremony. I've seen this around Seattle, and an in-law who lives with his partner in Taiwan described how these couples get made fun of, a bit, for doing this stuff.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:28 AM on December 18, 2013
Not only backdrops, but the partners will fly to distant locales to take wedding shots even before the ceremony. I've seen this around Seattle, and an in-law who lives with his partner in Taiwan described how these couples get made fun of, a bit, for doing this stuff.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:28 AM on December 18, 2013
Going To Maine: If I learnedthat folks were agitating for better treatment for stewards and stewardesses because of that story I'd be outraged, because it isn't evidence of anything. If I learned that folks were agitating for better treatment of stewards and stewardesses because, after reading that story, they found a bunch of sourced stories that were true and demonstrated that airline workers had a bad deal, I'd be delighted.
This seems weird to me. You know people behave badly on planes, and you know flight attendants should be treated better, so can't you just assume that people have "sourced stories that were true" to whatever level of veracity you require?
posted by Rock Steady at 7:41 AM on December 18, 2013
This seems weird to me. You know people behave badly on planes, and you know flight attendants should be treated better, so can't you just assume that people have "sourced stories that were true" to whatever level of veracity you require?
posted by Rock Steady at 7:41 AM on December 18, 2013
This seems weird to me. You know people behave badly on planes, and you know flight attendants should be treated better, so can't you just assume that people have "sourced stories that were true" to whatever level of veracity you require?
I mean, imagine we are at a negotiation for better compensation for flight attendants. Instead of stories by flight attendants about how things have been really crappy and they've been abused, the union representative says "Get a load of this piece of fiction about how bad things are! It's inspired by true events." and shows that Buzzfeed piece. It would be a sad, sad year in the houses of flight attendants everywhere.
Personally, I know no flight attendants. I've seen things posted in pseudonymous, relatively low-stakes forums like Metafilter that I like to think are true, but it's things like a Moth monologue by a flight attendant that I once heard that give 'em some teeth.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:08 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I mean, imagine we are at a negotiation for better compensation for flight attendants. Instead of stories by flight attendants about how things have been really crappy and they've been abused, the union representative says "Get a load of this piece of fiction about how bad things are! It's inspired by true events." and shows that Buzzfeed piece. It would be a sad, sad year in the houses of flight attendants everywhere.
Personally, I know no flight attendants. I've seen things posted in pseudonymous, relatively low-stakes forums like Metafilter that I like to think are true, but it's things like a Moth monologue by a flight attendant that I once heard that give 'em some teeth.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:08 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Actually, I should revise that. "It's inspired by true events." -> "it's inspired by some guy's imagination, but people found that it painted flight attendants in a sympathetic, realistic light."
posted by Going To Maine at 8:20 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by Going To Maine at 8:20 AM on December 18, 2013
Going To Maine: I mean, imagine we are at a negotiation for better compensation for flight attendants. Instead of stories by flight attendants about how things have been really crappy and they've been abused, the union representative says "Get a load of this piece of fiction about how bad things are! It's inspired by true events." and shows that Buzzfeed piece.
But surely there should be different standards of admissibility in a court room, a contract negotiation, a newspaper and Twitter? If I'm relying on a Twitter feed for my contract negotiations, true story or not, I deserve what I get. If I am relying on a Twitter feed for a little entertainment (and I did not find this particular story entertaining, fwiw) then why do I need to concern myself with factchecking?
posted by Rock Steady at 8:31 AM on December 18, 2013
But surely there should be different standards of admissibility in a court room, a contract negotiation, a newspaper and Twitter? If I'm relying on a Twitter feed for my contract negotiations, true story or not, I deserve what I get. If I am relying on a Twitter feed for a little entertainment (and I did not find this particular story entertaining, fwiw) then why do I need to concern myself with factchecking?
posted by Rock Steady at 8:31 AM on December 18, 2013
This seems to open a door to truthiness that is rather shut. We have enough issues countering poor science and hoaxes as it is. Giving them some form of legitimacy just seems wrong.
posted by arcticseal at 10:07 AM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by arcticseal at 10:07 AM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
Wow, they even shortened up the cycle around here, too: the first comment on this new FPP is just the word "fake" with a link!
posted by wenestvedt at 10:40 AM on December 18, 2013
posted by wenestvedt at 10:40 AM on December 18, 2013
This thesis bothers me. Does it not lead us to a place where nothing is real
Nothing to get hung about.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:51 AM on December 18, 2013 [10 favorites]
Nothing to get hung about.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:51 AM on December 18, 2013 [10 favorites]
wenestvedt: Wow, they even shortened up the cycle around here, too: the first comment on this new FPP is just the word "fake" with a link!
At this point, we should probably just replace MetaFilter with a redirect to snopes.com.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:53 AM on December 18, 2013
At this point, we should probably just replace MetaFilter with a redirect to snopes.com.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:53 AM on December 18, 2013
Related: On the NPR show "Wait, wait, don't tell me," there is a segment where the three panelists each relate a wacky-sounding news story, one of which is real and two are fake. A contestant on the phone has to guess which is the true story (in order to win a personalized recording of Carl Kasell's voice on their answering machine). They often guess wrong, because it really can be hard to distinguish truth from fiction in these reports.
posted by beagle at 10:53 AM on December 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by beagle at 10:53 AM on December 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
so many things in the last month followed this pattern but in the end you couldn't (except for that lame guy on a plane fighting with a fake woman story) say they were totally definitively hoaxes
But the anti-gay note thing turned out to be totally, definitively a hoax, right? And the waitress in question was really and truly using that story to get money for charity. And pocketing the money.
That's part of why getting the truth matters. These stories are usually some kind of call to action. And someone who lies to you about why you're being called to action is likely to cut some ethical corners as the action is taken.
You know people behave badly on planes, and you know flight attendants should be treated better, so can't you just assume that people have "sourced stories that were true" to whatever level of veracity you require?
No. You prove your case, or you got no case. Otherwise Fox News is going to continue telling stories of New Black Panthers marauding through white neighborhoods and you're going to have no response beyond "Well that's not a nice thing to say."
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 11:23 AM on December 18, 2013 [5 favorites]
But the anti-gay note thing turned out to be totally, definitively a hoax, right? And the waitress in question was really and truly using that story to get money for charity. And pocketing the money.
That's part of why getting the truth matters. These stories are usually some kind of call to action. And someone who lies to you about why you're being called to action is likely to cut some ethical corners as the action is taken.
You know people behave badly on planes, and you know flight attendants should be treated better, so can't you just assume that people have "sourced stories that were true" to whatever level of veracity you require?
No. You prove your case, or you got no case. Otherwise Fox News is going to continue telling stories of New Black Panthers marauding through white neighborhoods and you're going to have no response beyond "Well that's not a nice thing to say."
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 11:23 AM on December 18, 2013 [5 favorites]
Ha! I hadn't heard Awful Airline Passenger was fake. The funny thing about Awful Airline Passenger is that Gale himself was as awful as his fictional fellow passenger in that story. People I didn't know on Twitter accused me of being related to the AAP because I said that about Gale.
I guess making himself somewhat despicable in the fiction helps to sell it as real. Then again, did he even see himself as being awful in the story? To his target audience, he was a white hatted hero. Does he think the same way as them or does he just know how to play to them?
much ambiguity many levels wow
posted by ignignokt at 11:28 AM on December 18, 2013
I guess making himself somewhat despicable in the fiction helps to sell it as real. Then again, did he even see himself as being awful in the story? To his target audience, he was a white hatted hero. Does he think the same way as them or does he just know how to play to them?
much ambiguity many levels wow
posted by ignignokt at 11:28 AM on December 18, 2013
That horrible Google Bus protest is another example of how we can't take "initial reports" at face value now.
posted by ignignokt at 11:33 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by ignignokt at 11:33 AM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
ThatFuzzyBastard: Otherwise Fox News is going to continue telling stories of New Black Panthers marauding through white neighborhoods and you're going to have no response beyond "Well that's not a nice thing to say."
I don't care how fake it is and how well you can prove your case, the people who want to believe that story are going to believe it anyway. I think it's a mistake to put "The Truth" up on a pedestal as some sort of platonic ideal that will make everyone listen to reason and come around to your way of seeing things.
It's still OK to put Paul "The Truth" Pierce on a pedestal. He is awesome and deserves better than the Nets.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:03 PM on December 18, 2013
I don't care how fake it is and how well you can prove your case, the people who want to believe that story are going to believe it anyway. I think it's a mistake to put "The Truth" up on a pedestal as some sort of platonic ideal that will make everyone listen to reason and come around to your way of seeing things.
It's still OK to put Paul "The Truth" Pierce on a pedestal. He is awesome and deserves better than the Nets.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:03 PM on December 18, 2013
Interestingly, Pajiba just ran a piece on the Shia Laboeuf serial plagiarism story and linked it to most of the hoax stories mentioned here. I'm not sure I'm on board with the rhetorical move, but I found it interesting.
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:44 PM on December 18, 2013
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:44 PM on December 18, 2013
I don't care how fake it is and how well you can prove your case, the people who want to believe that story are going to believe it anyway.
You could have that view, but also believe that incitement and provocation on, say, racial, religious, or ethnicity grounds is extremely unwise. Matter of degrees, man. This kind of incident is what sometimes leads to rioting or the passage of egregious laws. I'd hate to be sanguine and say, "they would have rioted anyway" or "that law was coming down regardless." There are too many groups of people around the world who are vulnerable to backlash from hoaxes. If the whole world was blasé whether some gays are sneaking HIV-positive blood into blood banks or if some Jews are plotting to dismantle beloved Christmas traditions, that would be one thing, but it's not. Claims have consequences, and oftentimes the consequences are worse that the most satisfying lie.
posted by Nomyte at 12:51 PM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
You could have that view, but also believe that incitement and provocation on, say, racial, religious, or ethnicity grounds is extremely unwise. Matter of degrees, man. This kind of incident is what sometimes leads to rioting or the passage of egregious laws. I'd hate to be sanguine and say, "they would have rioted anyway" or "that law was coming down regardless." There are too many groups of people around the world who are vulnerable to backlash from hoaxes. If the whole world was blasé whether some gays are sneaking HIV-positive blood into blood banks or if some Jews are plotting to dismantle beloved Christmas traditions, that would be one thing, but it's not. Claims have consequences, and oftentimes the consequences are worse that the most satisfying lie.
posted by Nomyte at 12:51 PM on December 18, 2013 [4 favorites]
Nomyte: There are too many groups of people around the world who are vulnerable to backlash from hoaxes.
I agree with you entirely. I'm just describing the world we appear to live in. A world in which, it appears, the line between "truth" and "lie" and "news" and "story" is increasingly meaningless. I would argue that if we want to help the groups of people you reference, we need to make them less vulnerable to hoaxes, not rail against each successive hoax after the damage has already been done. If we do that we are fighting a battle we have already lost.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:01 PM on December 18, 2013
I agree with you entirely. I'm just describing the world we appear to live in. A world in which, it appears, the line between "truth" and "lie" and "news" and "story" is increasingly meaningless. I would argue that if we want to help the groups of people you reference, we need to make them less vulnerable to hoaxes, not rail against each successive hoax after the damage has already been done. If we do that we are fighting a battle we have already lost.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:01 PM on December 18, 2013
we need to make them less vulnerable to hoaxes, not rail against each successive hoax after the damage has already been done.
I think one of your options has a defined action plan, while the other one does not. It's hard to make bash-retardant gays.
posted by Nomyte at 1:18 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I think one of your options has a defined action plan, while the other one does not. It's hard to make bash-retardant gays.
posted by Nomyte at 1:18 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Next Metatalk Post:
"I wrote an essay about Cortex" and it just links to a picture of a booty.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:59 PM on December 18, 2013
"I wrote an essay about Cortex" and it just links to a picture of a booty.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:59 PM on December 18, 2013
The awful airline passenger story, if true, says something about how people really act on planes.
The awful airline passenger story, if true, says something about how a few people really acted on one particular plane, on one flight.
Extrapolating that to the behavior of airline passengers in general cannot be done from the story alone, even if it were true.
Its popularity may come from a certain resonance with how readers believe (rightly or wrongly) some airline passengers behave; but that resonance remains whether the story is true or not.
If I learnedthat folks were agitating for better treatment for stewards and stewardesses because of that story I'd be outraged, because it isn't evidence of anything.
But even if it were true, it would only be evidence of a single instance of a flight attendant being treated badly. There's no way of knowing from the story alone whether that sort of treatment is exceedingly rare, or happening a few times per day across all flights, or a few times per flight.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:05 PM on December 18, 2013
The awful airline passenger story, if true, says something about how a few people really acted on one particular plane, on one flight.
Extrapolating that to the behavior of airline passengers in general cannot be done from the story alone, even if it were true.
Its popularity may come from a certain resonance with how readers believe (rightly or wrongly) some airline passengers behave; but that resonance remains whether the story is true or not.
If I learnedthat folks were agitating for better treatment for stewards and stewardesses because of that story I'd be outraged, because it isn't evidence of anything.
But even if it were true, it would only be evidence of a single instance of a flight attendant being treated badly. There's no way of knowing from the story alone whether that sort of treatment is exceedingly rare, or happening a few times per day across all flights, or a few times per flight.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:05 PM on December 18, 2013
I've been lead to believe that this is the central conceit of modern christianity.
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:06 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:06 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
...and string theory
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:11 PM on December 18, 2013
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:11 PM on December 18, 2013
I'm made-up and I'm totally real.
posted by The Whelk at 3:14 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by The Whelk at 3:14 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
How does your interaction with the story of the Awful Airline Passenger materially change depending on it's veracity?
For me, it took something which was only disturbingly sexist into something which was REALLY disturbingly sexist. When it was a "real" annoying woman, while I was horrified by his response to her, the likely pain to her based on his harassment and intimidation, etc... it seemed much closer to bargain basement sexism; woman is female in public and gets a negative response from area sexist. I could also hope that he was exaggerating for his fans and that the staff of the plane wouldn't have cooperated in the way he said.
When it became clear he made it up - and not only made it up but made it up to entertain people and viewed it as a "feel good" story - it became not only about the fact that he (and a lot of other people) thought this was a reasonable response to a woman being Annoying In Public (tm), but also that out of the infinite choices of imagination, what entertained him the most was making up a woman to harass and mistreat. He literally had the world at his fingertips - he could have easily taken this into the real of plausible to implausible in a non-sexist, non-approving-of-harassment-and-insults sort of way.
What that says to me is that there really are people who enjoy harassing, intimidating, and insulting women so much that they fantasize about it to entertain themselves or others. On a level I knew that, but having so blatant a reminder of it (and a reminder of how much OTHER PEOPLE approved of it because LOL women in public AMIRITE?) was really depressing and disheartening. I try really had to not hate men I just hear about, but knowing there was someone who would be actively entertained by harassing someone like me, and he would be cheered on by tons of other people... well, I find it hard to trust people for a reason, is all I'm saying.
I have considered using my Twitter stream for similar kinds of "stories," where one starts with something plausible and mundane and it becomes increasingly extreme to entertain others (one thought when I heard about his fantasy was that it would have been so much funnier if he had sympathized with her distress, brought the people on the plane together to comfort each other in the time of difficulty, and they managed to summon some of Santa's Reindeer to push the plane faster so everyone got home in time), and maybe I'll do that this holiday season to take some of the nasty taste out of my mouth.
I have always viewed the kinds of stories we tell (it didn't happen, but it's REAL) as giving material information about what kind of people we are and what kind of world we create together. For me, that means sometimes the stories we tell are more important than the veracity of the facts, for the stories we tell outline what we are comfortable with and want to perpetuate in our lives.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:19 PM on December 18, 2013 [17 favorites]
For me, it took something which was only disturbingly sexist into something which was REALLY disturbingly sexist. When it was a "real" annoying woman, while I was horrified by his response to her, the likely pain to her based on his harassment and intimidation, etc... it seemed much closer to bargain basement sexism; woman is female in public and gets a negative response from area sexist. I could also hope that he was exaggerating for his fans and that the staff of the plane wouldn't have cooperated in the way he said.
When it became clear he made it up - and not only made it up but made it up to entertain people and viewed it as a "feel good" story - it became not only about the fact that he (and a lot of other people) thought this was a reasonable response to a woman being Annoying In Public (tm), but also that out of the infinite choices of imagination, what entertained him the most was making up a woman to harass and mistreat. He literally had the world at his fingertips - he could have easily taken this into the real of plausible to implausible in a non-sexist, non-approving-of-harassment-and-insults sort of way.
What that says to me is that there really are people who enjoy harassing, intimidating, and insulting women so much that they fantasize about it to entertain themselves or others. On a level I knew that, but having so blatant a reminder of it (and a reminder of how much OTHER PEOPLE approved of it because LOL women in public AMIRITE?) was really depressing and disheartening. I try really had to not hate men I just hear about, but knowing there was someone who would be actively entertained by harassing someone like me, and he would be cheered on by tons of other people... well, I find it hard to trust people for a reason, is all I'm saying.
I have considered using my Twitter stream for similar kinds of "stories," where one starts with something plausible and mundane and it becomes increasingly extreme to entertain others (one thought when I heard about his fantasy was that it would have been so much funnier if he had sympathized with her distress, brought the people on the plane together to comfort each other in the time of difficulty, and they managed to summon some of Santa's Reindeer to push the plane faster so everyone got home in time), and maybe I'll do that this holiday season to take some of the nasty taste out of my mouth.
I have always viewed the kinds of stories we tell (it didn't happen, but it's REAL) as giving material information about what kind of people we are and what kind of world we create together. For me, that means sometimes the stories we tell are more important than the veracity of the facts, for the stories we tell outline what we are comfortable with and want to perpetuate in our lives.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:19 PM on December 18, 2013 [17 favorites]
But even if it were true, it would only be evidence of a single instance of a flight attendant being treated badly. There's no way of knowing from the story alone whether that sort of treatment is exceedingly rare, or happening a few times per day across all flights, or a few times per flight.
I agree with this. Reports about a single outrageous incident are just provocative stories that may as well be fiction. Their veracity should have no immediate impact on anything, just like whether or not I had pancakes for breakfast or fucked a dog this morning has no effect whatsoever on your day.
The two problems are when an isolated incident is being implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) used to suggest a trend where there is no firm evidence of one. That's scumbag journalism.
The other problem is the backlash, as I mentioned above. Given false or inconclusive evidence, people who are bad readers of news will over-extrapolate and over-react, sometimes in dangerous and even violent ways.
Yes, real news is often also provocative, but maybe we should consider it a bigger failure if backlash results from something that is basically a believable lie.
posted by Nomyte at 3:24 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I agree with this. Reports about a single outrageous incident are just provocative stories that may as well be fiction. Their veracity should have no immediate impact on anything, just like whether or not I had pancakes for breakfast or fucked a dog this morning has no effect whatsoever on your day.
The two problems are when an isolated incident is being implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) used to suggest a trend where there is no firm evidence of one. That's scumbag journalism.
The other problem is the backlash, as I mentioned above. Given false or inconclusive evidence, people who are bad readers of news will over-extrapolate and over-react, sometimes in dangerous and even violent ways.
Yes, real news is often also provocative, but maybe we should consider it a bigger failure if backlash results from something that is basically a believable lie.
posted by Nomyte at 3:24 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
it became not only about the fact that he (and a lot of other people) thought this was a reasonable response to a woman being Annoying In Public (tm), but also that out of the infinite choices of imagination, what entertained him the most was making up a woman to harass and mistreat.
I have this same feeling about Rape as Plot Device. When you decide to rape one of your characters to move the story along you are introducing one more rape into the world. I've seen people do this well (rarely) and do this poorly (often) but that fact that Rape is a Real Thing and It's Bad is not alone justification for using more of it because your married couple is too happy and you have to find a way to give them something to talk and worry about. Or a way to show that your bad guy is Really Bad. Or a way to show why your female character Has Problems (ugh). It's a trope that often unfolds in super-predictable ways and that's because the people writing about it are relying on "It sounds true!"" (in their own head, where it's never happened to them, where they've just seen these same stories on tv over and over) rather than trying to have characters interacting in more complicated, less-predictable ways. Not that we should be surprised that TV lacks depth. But journalism could have some...
So when people do this, I'm not mad so much as just "Huh, that seems like a sort of facile way to get people heavily emotionally involved without having to do something too complex" It's basically preying on people's own bad past experiences if they have first hand experience with it, and/or their own trope-ish knowledge of the topic if all they know is the TV/movie version of it. See also: the guy's daughter is kidnapped and now he is a crazy person trying to get her back because Bad Things (mostly rape, really) might happen to her. This is not to say that there aren't very worthwhile stories to be told about sexual assault or even stories that aren't about sexual assault that can include sexual assault, but I'm often furrowing my brow thinking "Why go there in that way?" when I see it (over and over) on mainstream television and movies.
I have always viewed the kinds of stories we tell (it didn't happen, but it's REAL) as giving material information about what kind of people we are and what kind of world we create together.
Yeah. My it didn't happen but it's real stories are all about being able to talk to the moon and sleep in a bed of moss in the forest. Most people's stories, especially once you've known them long enough, are as much about them as they are about the story.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:33 PM on December 18, 2013 [16 favorites]
I have this same feeling about Rape as Plot Device. When you decide to rape one of your characters to move the story along you are introducing one more rape into the world. I've seen people do this well (rarely) and do this poorly (often) but that fact that Rape is a Real Thing and It's Bad is not alone justification for using more of it because your married couple is too happy and you have to find a way to give them something to talk and worry about. Or a way to show that your bad guy is Really Bad. Or a way to show why your female character Has Problems (ugh). It's a trope that often unfolds in super-predictable ways and that's because the people writing about it are relying on "It sounds true!"" (in their own head, where it's never happened to them, where they've just seen these same stories on tv over and over) rather than trying to have characters interacting in more complicated, less-predictable ways. Not that we should be surprised that TV lacks depth. But journalism could have some...
So when people do this, I'm not mad so much as just "Huh, that seems like a sort of facile way to get people heavily emotionally involved without having to do something too complex" It's basically preying on people's own bad past experiences if they have first hand experience with it, and/or their own trope-ish knowledge of the topic if all they know is the TV/movie version of it. See also: the guy's daughter is kidnapped and now he is a crazy person trying to get her back because Bad Things (mostly rape, really) might happen to her. This is not to say that there aren't very worthwhile stories to be told about sexual assault or even stories that aren't about sexual assault that can include sexual assault, but I'm often furrowing my brow thinking "Why go there in that way?" when I see it (over and over) on mainstream television and movies.
I have always viewed the kinds of stories we tell (it didn't happen, but it's REAL) as giving material information about what kind of people we are and what kind of world we create together.
Yeah. My it didn't happen but it's real stories are all about being able to talk to the moon and sleep in a bed of moss in the forest. Most people's stories, especially once you've known them long enough, are as much about them as they are about the story.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:33 PM on December 18, 2013 [16 favorites]
Hoaxes also make me wary that when someone has a real story to tell, they won't be believed like the Boy who cried Wolf.
posted by arcticseal at 5:27 PM on December 18, 2013
posted by arcticseal at 5:27 PM on December 18, 2013
My eight-year-old daughter and I were in an appliance store today. Televisions were blaring news stories. My daughter asked me why they always seem to talk about bad stuff on the news, and never good stuff. I explained that bad stuff got people's attention more than good stuff, which means more people watch, which means advertisers will give them more money for ads on the news. So it isn't really news, it's entertainment, and you shouldn't really pay attention to it.
I only heard my explanation after it had already come out of my mouth. When I was in college, I didn't want to do television news for a career (I was pursuing television) because I felt it was boring, and starting to turn into a mechanized automaton spewing out pointless filler (24 hour news had just become a thing, and studios had just started turning to remote-control cameras.) 20+ years later, the awfulness that is television news really has exceeded my wildest expectations. I'm not surprised other news types (and the Internet) have embraced the same approach.
posted by davejay at 6:01 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I only heard my explanation after it had already come out of my mouth. When I was in college, I didn't want to do television news for a career (I was pursuing television) because I felt it was boring, and starting to turn into a mechanized automaton spewing out pointless filler (24 hour news had just become a thing, and studios had just started turning to remote-control cameras.) 20+ years later, the awfulness that is television news really has exceeded my wildest expectations. I'm not surprised other news types (and the Internet) have embraced the same approach.
posted by davejay at 6:01 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
If you want an arguably less cynical explanation for next time, you could always tell her that it's because good things are happening all the time, so they're not news. It's kind of like how you don't go tell the teacher when one of your classmates is nice to you — it's expected. Or you could just say that all that stuff is on upworthy.
posted by klangklangston at 6:05 PM on December 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by klangklangston at 6:05 PM on December 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
I've posted this before, but with regard to the omission of happy news, that always reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from G. K. Chesterton:
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that the moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, ‘Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,’ or ‘Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.’ They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; the can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.posted by Sticherbeast at 6:38 PM on December 18, 2013 [10 favorites]
MetaFilter: a picture made up entirely of exceptions
posted by Going To Maine at 7:06 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 7:06 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
"20+ years later, the awfulness that is television news really has exceeded my wildest expectations."
Whenever I have the rare misfortune of seeing even a minute of local television news, I almost invariably find that I want to throw something at the television. It's some horrid combination of insipid, sensationalistic, and unimportant with almost no actual information content, and it ignores three-quarters of all the actually important stuff going on locally that "news organizations" should be covering.
That it's not actually journalism or valuable to the polis and is instead some kind of life-draining "entertainment" would be tolerable to me were it not for the fact that by a large margin this is how the public actually gets most of the local "news".
Throwing something at the television is a substitute for demolishing the news studios, which would be so much more productive and satisfying.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:43 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Whenever I have the rare misfortune of seeing even a minute of local television news, I almost invariably find that I want to throw something at the television. It's some horrid combination of insipid, sensationalistic, and unimportant with almost no actual information content, and it ignores three-quarters of all the actually important stuff going on locally that "news organizations" should be covering.
That it's not actually journalism or valuable to the polis and is instead some kind of life-draining "entertainment" would be tolerable to me were it not for the fact that by a large margin this is how the public actually gets most of the local "news".
Throwing something at the television is a substitute for demolishing the news studios, which would be so much more productive and satisfying.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:43 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I try not to be so public in my anti-TV news sentiment, since it's TV reporters that I deal with mostly now. But in j-school there was definitely a lot of, "Oh, you're in broadcast?"
posted by klangklangston at 8:04 PM on December 18, 2013
posted by klangklangston at 8:04 PM on December 18, 2013
"Entertaining" does not transform "fake" into "real". And attempts to blur distinctions between the fake and the real, the true and the false, are meat and potatoes for those with an agenda to push. They should always be called out.
posted by Decani at 8:14 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Decani at 8:14 PM on December 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
I think part of the problem is that fact-checking these kinds of stories is almost impossible to do from the internet. Sometimes the truth is just not online.. It's rare that someone will pound the pavement and make the phone calls and talk to people in person, and not stop until they get an answer. Without journalism, these stories are murky because no one did the hard work. The Atlantic article on the telemarketing robot ended when someone hung up on the writer. Well, that's enough for a blog post, guess I'll leave it hanging. That doesn't mean the story is real. It means it is lazy.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 9:04 PM on December 19, 2013
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 9:04 PM on December 19, 2013
I have some affection for the older version:
GP: Is Eris true?posted by 23 at 9:05 PM on December 19, 2013 [3 favorites]
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
When it's me, it's real.
posted by fake at 3:24 PM on December 20, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by fake at 3:24 PM on December 20, 2013 [6 favorites]
User #1 describes MetaFilter as "A news-savvy community of over 60,000 users" in the piece.
Hunting around online, other descriptions of MetaFilter include:
- Slashdot (2004): Collective weblog.
- Washington Post (2004): Vibrant, visionary site.
- New York Times (2004): Prominent web site.
- Guardian (2007): A bit like a massive blog slash slashdot slash early prototype for Digg.
- BBC (2009): An active OAP [old age pensioner, or senior].
- Telegraph (2010): Popular community blog.
- Techrader (2013): Brainy chat forum.
Are there any other entertaining, offbeat or standout descriptions of this unique place, of, well, us? Who are we?
posted by Wordshore at 12:48 PM on December 27, 2013
Hunting around online, other descriptions of MetaFilter include:
- Slashdot (2004): Collective weblog.
- Washington Post (2004): Vibrant, visionary site.
- New York Times (2004): Prominent web site.
- Guardian (2007): A bit like a massive blog slash slashdot slash early prototype for Digg.
- BBC (2009): An active OAP [old age pensioner, or senior].
- Telegraph (2010): Popular community blog.
- Techrader (2013): Brainy chat forum.
Are there any other entertaining, offbeat or standout descriptions of this unique place, of, well, us? Who are we?
posted by Wordshore at 12:48 PM on December 27, 2013
According to Google's suggestion feature, "metafilter is down".
posted by Going To Maine at 1:03 PM on December 27, 2013
posted by Going To Maine at 1:03 PM on December 27, 2013
Even if it’s fake, it’s fake: Journalists should seek “facts,” not “Truth”
I am against the idea that upon discovering objectivity is hard and perfect objectivity impossible we should just give up entirely.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 2:50 PM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]
I am against the idea that upon discovering objectivity is hard and perfect objectivity impossible we should just give up entirely.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 2:50 PM on December 28, 2013 [2 favorites]
As full disclosure, as the OP hereof, subsequent to this MetaTalk post and Matt's NiemanLab post, I also contributed a post to the NiemanLab predictions series.
And, thanks to all for some interesting comments in this thread.
posted by beagle at 6:08 PM on December 28, 2013
And, thanks to all for some interesting comments in this thread.
posted by beagle at 6:08 PM on December 28, 2013
According to Google's suggestion feature, "metafilter is down".
At #4, Google completes "Metafilter is" with...
"Metafilter Friendship is Magic"
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:57 AM on December 29, 2013 [2 favorites]
At #4, Google completes "Metafilter is" with...
"Metafilter Friendship is Magic"
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 7:57 AM on December 29, 2013 [2 favorites]
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 5:55 AM on December 18, 2013 [7 favorites]