Be Your Own Snopes: When Everyone Has a Megaphone, the Truth Matters Even More
Great interviewing skills are a true joy to behold. Sean Evans over at Hot Ones is not only an incredible interviewer but does it while eating chicken wings doused in increasingly hot sauces.
Recently, I landed upon Sean’s interview with Shia LaBeouf. I was lukewarm on LaBeouf for most of his career and, when he kind of went off the rails into the “I’m Not Famous” performance art kick, I believed the clickbait that he was more of a LaDouche. I watched the episode and walked away with two notions: LaBeouf is actually a pretty cool guy and that the internet megaphone, so democratizing of thoughts and opinions as it is, is filled with incomplete and damning narratives about everyone.
Here’s the interview:
Mind you, it didn’t take the internet to proliferate what we now call fake news:
George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree.
Mussolini did not make the trains of Italy run on time.
Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake.”
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb.
Einstein was not bad at math.
With the digital world, however, the speed and frequency of baseless accusations and confirmed ideas with no foundation is overwhelming. The addition of memes has exacerbated the difficulty of separating fact from fiction. Without hours of time to research every claim, we tend to allow the propagandized messages to go unchallenged.
While America may be broken (a subjective perspective) the meme is fundamentally untrue.
Thompson's sentence was not based on his sale of marijuana but on the basis of a weapons charge, and his jail term was multiplied because he was already a thrice-convicted felon. Meili was not convicted of kidnapping the girl, and police statements suggest she voluntarily left her family home with him. Neither was Meili convicted of raping the girl. (Snopes)
Thank god for Snopes, right?
Unfortunately, there isn’t a Snopes for much of history. For most of the past two centuries, blacks have been written out of the books as being cultural and economic contributors so today the Woke are over correcting the record by revising the narrative to indicate how evil and monstrous white people in general have been and, consequently, are. The truth is far more complex but complex doesn’t serve the over correction and is thus ignored or derided. For dogma to stick, it has to be simple.
Most egregiously, there is no corrective body for the revision of smaller and more personal records. Big issues have daytime television but those shows are increasingly focusing on Trumpian News. Still, though, if someone creates a falsehood about you, you could always go on Dr. Phil:
When the truth of a situation comes down to two people fighting for clarity online, the person with the biggest reach gets to define history as he or she sees fit. Most people will believe the loudest voice with the most salacious details (often without actual receipts but the promise of them). As both Geobbels and Donald Trump have exemplified, the more the lie is repeated, the more it is believed.
Examples I can attest to include:
A Chicago-based failed stand up and film actor repeatedly claiming to have coined the term ‘Live Lit’ (even so bold as to get it in print in the Chicago Reader with a specific year of his invention of the term) despite it being used for at least five years prior to his use of it at several New York colleges as a class in live storytelling.
The disproven allegations of sexual misconduct of a Chicago-based comedy producer that caused him to cease performing for over two years before emerging once again. No. Not that one.
The unfounded rumor that I was “fired” from both The Moth and WBEZ (neither is true).
The fundamental misrepresentation of a Chicago legendary producer and his dealings with staff to paint a picture of abuse only to be investigated and proven completely false. No. Not that one. The other one.
The untruth that I forged a performance license all the way back in 2003 that still persists to this day.
Can you see why leaving Chicago had some other benefits aside from new opportunities and kickass weather? The Chicago Arts scene has turned into a cabal of mini-mobs looking for people to cancel and shame like locusts on a field of corn or Alt Right dudes looking for a bargain on torches at Pottery Barn.
While in a four-year relationship with a woman who worked with getting innocent death row inmates exonerated, I spent plenty of time talking to some of these men once released and their perspective was that they couldn’t seem to get past the stigma of the false convictions. The reality of their innocence was so overshadowed by the lie that, without some sort of megaphone to scream their innocence from, they were branded for life.
In slaveholding America, black slaves sometimes were lynched or wound up in prison after white women accused them of rape to cover up illicit but consensual sex. Fast-forward to the Jim Crow era and two infamous cases: the Scottsboro Boys of Alabama and the Groveland Boys of Florida. In each case, white women fabricated allegations of rape, alleging multiple black male attackers.
In the 21st century, female liars flipped the racial script: At Duke University in 2006, a black female college student accused three white lacrosse players of gang rape. The rape allegations proved false, and the Durham, N.C., district attorney was disbarred for trial misconduct.
According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump has lied over 12,000 times in roughly 930 days.
How does he get away with that? I mean, Christ, he’s one of the most seen humans on the entire planet. How is it possible he could tell that many lies and simply get away with it? Three questions are helpful in figuring this conundrum out:
Does what is being lied about confirm your existing belief?
Does the lie benefit you in some way?
Do you personally like the liar or aspire to be like the liar?
If the answer is yes to these despite your gut saying to you that what is being sold is scam goods, it is highly likely you’ll make a conscious choice to believe the lie. Coal miners believed Trump’s lies about bringing back coal because it confirmed their belief and they would personally benefit from it. Xenophobes believed Trump’s assertion that Mexican immigrants are rapists because of all three.
The burden on all of us these days is to be our own individual version of Snopes. If you believe a claim for any of the above reasons, it is incumbent upon you to verify the truth before you repeat it, repost it, retweet it, or even endorse it with a heart emoji. Repeat: do the research before you spread that bullshit around because once it’s out there, it’s almost impossible to get a correction on it.
If you are the butt of these rumors and innuendo, might I recommend being interviewed on Hot Ones? I hear the wings are fantastic.
