Ol' Buzzard has a post up musing on humans and how gullible we can be. This isn't exactly a news flash -- look at what gullible people managed to put in the White House -- but it did remind me again of a conversation I overheard on a public bus years ago.
Back when I was finishing up my dissertation, during my last semester on campus at VaTech, I was totally dependent on public transportation. I took the bus to campus, I took the bus home. The studio apartment I had was out at the very end of the bus line, which meant morning or evening there were never many people on it that far from campus.
So one morning I get on the bus. As usual I'm the only passenger. Another person gets on at the next stop, but the bus is still basically empty. The second passenger sits right behind the driver and strikes up a conversation. He's all enthused about something he had seen on television the night before. I can't help but hear -- the dude is loud, he's enthusiastic.
Turns out he'd watched an episode of "The X Files." He's super excited about it. And then it hits me. It becomes clear that he thought that what he saw was real. He did not realize David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were actors; he believed they were real FBI agents. It was on television, ergo, it had to be fact.
At the time I was amused. Today, not so much. I realize now that what I saw was the equivalent of "if it's on the Internet, it has to be true."
Anyone else want to bet that if that dude voted in 2016, it was for Trump?
The gullibility I think really belongs to those of us who were living under the delusion that nobody believed everything they read or viewed on TV.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother told me that in the early 1040's in Marion, Kentucky there was a vivid show of the northern lights one night (no one there had ever seen them before.) She said people were out in the streets praying - sure it was the second coming.
ReplyDeleteJust before 2000 my wife and I were in Marion and some of the preachers were preaching that the world was going to end on the millennium (Y2K) I had the owner of the local lumber company ask me if I was ready for 'the end.'
(This is why we left Kentucky and returned to Maine.) There are gullible people here too...but not as many.
the Ol'Buzzard
I haven't stopped by your blog (or any blog) for a while, but stopped by this evening. I'm glad I did. And glad you're still writing. :)
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