I have written elsewhere: “set aside videos of cute kittens or adolescents cracking up their skateboards. Let’s focus on those other things – political, social, religious, etc. – which get posted on social media and spread like wildfire!” I invite you to read the first two parts of this series before reading Part III:
“I don’t believe it!” Thoughts on Truth and Social Media – Part I
“I don’t believe it!” Thoughts on Truth and Social Media – Part II
Now I would like to update these with a Part III, with several other sources of doubtful “facts.”
ANONYMOUS INSIDERS
There is a whole genre of exposé literature that follows this formula: “I am an ex-[whatever] and I am going to reveal the shocking inside secrets.” Ex-Communist. Ex-Mormon. Ex-Satanist. Ex-Catholic priest (Charles Chiniquy, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, 1885).
Ex-Jesuit (Jack Chick’s man, “Alberto,” made a whole career with that claim). Ex-nun (Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed, 1836). Ex-physicist working for CERN. Ex-CIA operative. Ex-NASA scientist. Ex-Muslim. Ex-Freemason. In 2011 the internet was abuzz with “I was in the Illuminati: I’m Going to Tell you Everything, Shocking Expose.”
Of course, sometimes these revelations are legitimate: there are plenty of ex-Scientologists who seem to tell a consistent tale of what they saw on the inside. Some Jehovah’s Witnesses, KKK members, the same. There is a documentary I saw recently that argued that kids in a Christian “tough love” program were being physically and psychologically abused.[1] And sometimes “unnamed sources” in high places leak information to the media.
So, how can we sift out the more glaring fakes from the legitimate “anonymous sources”?
One sign of a fake Whistle Blower is this type of narrative: their claims are on the one hand grandiose, uncovering some horrific plot that threatens all humanity; but on the other hand they insist on remaining anonymous, giving out that they are afraid of losing their job, or their reputation, or that they fear for their personal safety.
Now, if someone doesn’t want to give their real name when they reveal some mundane insider information, that’s probably understandable, as in, “An unnamed source close to the Oval Office says that the president is leaning to, etc.” But let’s think of those “former whatevers” who spill the beans that the human race is about to be destroyed; that the government is poisoning us; that reptiles are running the planet; that the antichrist currently resides at such-and-such address. Issues of life or death. Now, my questions are as follows: (1) What class of moral delinquent would shrink from risking their job (or even their life!) if it’s going to save billions from extermination or damnation? (2) And if the “informers” in question thereby prove themselves to be of such demonstrably low character, then why in the world should I trust in anything they tell me in the first place? Let alone unverifiable revelations.
Remind me never to hide from the Nazis in these guys’s cellars!
Here’s an example: on YouTube a “Secret Chemtrail Pilot Speaks” – on condition of anonymity of course! – and divulges that the US government is, or is about to (he is a bit vague on this) commit genocide against its own people. He states: “I risk everything for disclosing so much information, and you will find very few like me. Even my own flight crew, would have me arrested and court martialed, if they knew of this dialogue.” Arrested? Court-martialed? What’s the meaning of such undiluted cowardice, if such a person (if the pilot even exists) uses this to justify why he won’t take steps to prevent a Holocaust?! I certainly hope that I “will find very few like” him. Sorry, friend – either stand up for the human race and risk not getting that promotion; or else, step off and stop peddling what I must assume are your fictions!
“Former-whatevers” play to our confirmation bias: we will tend to accept what they say if it confirms what we already believe, but reject it if it runs contrary to our beliefs. That is why, if you read something that deeply resonates within you, that may be a sign that you should be more, not less, alert. So, before you take someone’s word for it when he says, for example, “Jehovah’s Witnesses secretly torture small animals as part of their worship – Ex-leader reveals all!” you might want to use your skeptic spectacles. [2] The one above, the exposé that alleges abuse in a “tough love” youth camp, also brings out the confirmation bias: some are predisposed to think that “all teenagers complain they are being abused, therefore they are just complaining that they had to make their beds or something, and it’s probably a false story.” Others might say – and this is the direction in which my own confirmation bias nudges me – “I think that such authoritarian situations do breed abuse of power, so it’s probably true.”
HIDDEN AGENDAS IN VISIONS
A further disclosure about my own confirmation bias! I am extremely skeptical of people who claim to have gone to heaven or to hell, and then returned to tell me all about it in bestselling books. Multiple bestsellers. Kids’ coloring books. And videos. But unless your name is the Apostle Paul or the Apostle John or Ezekiel, I will seriously doubt it and insist that it’s the “traveler’s” responsibility to give me undeniable proof. Even if you are a cute kid who says that “Heaven is For Real” or a guy who writes about “My Trip to Heaven: Face to Face with Jesus.”
It is a long-standing tradition, spanning thousands of years, that people claim to take journeys to the Other World for the purpose of promoting their agenda of how This World ought to be run. In his Inferno, Dante told us precisely who would be in hell, and why. He told it as fiction, but his target was clear, those of his contemporaries whom Dante believed belonged in the flames. In the Judaism of the Second Temple, plenty of “seers” wrote about how they visited heaven or hell and returned to say who goes where (the Enochian literature, the Assumption of Moses, the Revelation of Metatron – yeah, it’s a real book!) and then spell out what exact form of Judaism will land you in The Good Place.
Here is a good modern example. A few years back, an Ecuadorian teenager Angélica Elizabeth Zambrano Mora claimed to have had a Near Death Experience, in which she spent 23 hours in hell. And who did she see there? Elvis. Pope John Paul II. Michael Jackson. The singer Selena also was in the flames, but she turned to Angélica and said:
‘Please, I ask you to go tell humanity about this, please speak out and do not be silent; go and tell them not to come to this place; go and tell them not to listen to my songs nor sing my songs!’ I asked her, ‘Why do you tell me this; why do you want me to go and say this?’ And she answered, ‘Because every time that they sing and listen to my songs, I am tormented even more and when I am tormented, the person who does this, who sings and listens to these songs that I used to sing when I was alive, is walking to this place. Please, go tell them not to come here; go tell them that hell is real!
I am, obviously, going on the assumption that Angélica did not go to hell for 23 hours; instead, I choose to spin it that, she “saw” in hell precisely those people who she believed should be there. Michael Jackson, she says, “had satanic covenants: He would come to agreements with the devil in order to achieve fame and attract many fans.” And everyone who likes his songs is in the devil’s trap and also en route to hell. The message is clear: don’t listen to Selena or Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley!
GROUP SOURCE, Redux
In Part II I wrote:
Group-sourcing is a terrific tool for gathering data – people can send in pictures or information. Then the people in charge always verify information before they use it. Except when they don’t. There are websites where no-one is actually running the show, and people can basically upload their own articles. Beforeitsnews.com is one such fount of disinformation. You don’t have to be a reporter or even check your facts or even sign your articles. I registered with a fake name, just for kicks, and I am now a cub reporter for (cue echo effect!) – Before…Its…News! I was sore tempted to make up some phony news story, just to see how easy it was to get it out there, but I felt that it’s ethically a gray area.
Okay, I held out for a year or so, and then succumbed: I spent a couple of hours, fabricating a fake news article – partly ripped off from the classic sf book Day of the Triffids – about how mutant sunflowers called Triffids were putting the human race at risk of extinction. I had a theologian chime in to say that they were the fulfillment of Revelation 9, the locusts with tails that sting like a scorpion. I then published it on www.beforeitsnews.com and left it up for about 24 hours.
I then clicked on it about 100 times, and drove the sunflower article up to #3 most popular.
Full disclosure: a dear friend, who is my go-to guy for ethical questions, objected to me posting a fake article even as “a sociological experiment.” As I usually do, I accepted his word on the morality of the issue. And so, I took the article down and felt badly about my sophomoric prank. But I still will share the aftermath.
So what happened next? Google confirms that before I could take it down, it had already been referenced on other sites. In fact, someone translated it word for word into Russian, and within a few months almost 70 Russia-language sites had repeated it. My sunflower story is seeing the world! Click here to see one of them:
Fake news is, just as I suspected, ridiculously easy to create, publish, and make go viral.
CBS aired a crime drama in the fall of 2017, titled “Wisdom of the Crowd”; it ran for just 13 episodes. Its premise: “A tech wiz who attempts to revolutionize crime solving – specifically the unsolved case of his daughter’s murder – with a crowd-sourcing app that utilizes the public for information.” Interesting idea, maybe it will be entertaining. But as someone who has had way too much experience with the wisdom of the online crowd, I cannot imagine any way in which a cop would be able to sift through those mountains of fake data – from the wise guys, the trolls, the conspiracy theorists, the lurkers – and figure out crimes. Robocop seems more plausible, or X-Files. Or even the Yeti chasers over on the National Geographic Channel!
Keep watching the skies! Or rather, keep ignoring the faked news!
NOTES:
[1] “Kidnapped for Christ” (2014) is a study of Escuela Caribe in the Dominican Republic. Here in Costa Rica, there was a scandal a few years ago about a similar tough-love programs, see http://www.ticotimes.net/2006/07/21/tough-love-camp-owner-faces-trial.
[2] An excellent example of how confirmation bias comes into play is the 2009 case of Abby Johnson. She claimed that in her local Planned Parenthood clinic, the administrators pushed the workers to push for more and more abortions, since they were so lucrative. Fox News put out her story as the straight truth (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2009/11/02/planned-parenthood-director-quits-watching-abortion-ultrasound.html), and those who criticized Johnson were charged with having the confirmation bias of the pro-abortion crowd. Slate magazine, on the other hand, took the view that Johnson was making up much of what she said, and that it was the confirmation bias of the pro-lifers that made her credible (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2010/01/07/abby_johnsons_conversion_story_sounds_great_but_appears_to_be_false.html). Confirmation bias: the sword guaranteed to cut both ways! In the end, I do not know whose opinion to believe in this case.
RECOMMENDED LINKS:
My articles:
“‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ has its 50th Anniversary”
“Did a NASA Supercomputer Prove the Bible?”
Did They Discover a Giant Skeleton? Well, No.
Other source:
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/03/16/trusting-the-internet/
‘”I (still) don’t believe it!” Thoughts on truth and social media – Part III,’ by Gary S. Shogren, Ph. D. in New Testament Exegesis, Professor at Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 