Bambloozle Me, Please!
/Note from the author: I wrote this article in 2008! Tamarack Communication did not exist then, nor was the Speakeasy open. It’s been archived and ignored for years. Today a friend’s reference to Carl Sagan and his warning about “bamboozling” brought it to mind, and I dusted it off and brought it into the Speakeasy. Imagine! We’re still wrangling with the same communication issue that plagued us 13 years ago!
Please check your facts before forwarding those titillating but inflammatory or prejudicial (or just plain stupid) email messages to unsuspecting voters or impressionable readers who might believe everything you send their way. You know the messages I mean: The one that asserts that immigrants are better off in America than retirees because they get a bigger government check; the one that claims that Starbucks wouldn’t send free coffee to U.S. troops in Iraq because the company opposes the war and anyone associated with it; the assertions that U.S. legislators enjoy huge pensions but don’t have to contribute to Social Security; the urgent request to sign a petition to be sent to the White House to encourage the president not to extend social services to illegal immigrants…and on and on and on.
You’ve received them; we all have. Have you passed them on? You don’t have to answer that, but we know someone is passing these things around through cyberspace. Do you think they check them out first to see whether they’re true? I would bet my firstborn that 99% of the inflammatory, denigrating, sappy and nasty emails forwarded from computers in this country on any given day are passed on without the most minimal attempt to ensure their veracity. People are bamboozled, and then they go ahead and bamboozle everyone in their address books—or at least those they believe share their political views or harbor fears or prejudices similar to theirs. Now why is that? Why would otherwise intelligent, responsible citizens send printed idiocy screaming around the globe and clogging electronic mailboxes without so much as a keystroke or mouse click in the interests of truthfulness?
I think I know why: We often like to be bamboozled. It’s such an effortless way to stoke the fires of frustration, anger and even hatred that smolder within us. I used to pass along warnings about dangerous products or women lured from their homes into the hands of a rapist by the sound of a crying baby cleverly recorded and played into the night air. I passed on that tender (but misrepresented) photo of the fetus clutching the surgeon’s finger during in utero surgery. The latter was so precious, the former so compelling. Was my face red when I learned that I’d been bamboozled!
I can forgive (and delete) the sappy messages about friendship and love that end with the line “pass this on to ten women you care about.” They’re not harmful, and I know, in my heart, the ten women I care about would be grateful to know I hit “delete” instead of saddling them with yet another gooey, sappy message. I don’t like that people send those to me, but they’re basically harmless, so I let them pass. After all, there’s really no bamboozling going on—just melodramatic foolishness.
The forwarded emails that worry me are the ones meant to fan the flames of prejudice or polarize voters or pit one population against another. Some of them masquerade as jokes or cute little stories, but they have sharp edges and dangerous points buried beneath the laughter. Many seem to originate (seem to—who knows where any of them really originate?) from fixed-income retired veterans who deserve our gratitude and now have an axe they ought to be allowed to grind in public. Some come from neighbors, friends or family members who stumble upon a sarcastic piece filled with statistics that seem to justify one of their own pet peeves or deep-seated prejudices. These are the ones that worry me. Whenever I receive such a forwarded message from an individual whose judgment I generally trust, I ask myself: Why did he allow himself to be bamboozled? Why did she pass this on to all these people without verifying its truthfulness?
My answer is that people latch onto such inflammatory messages and blindly embrace them because the message so wonderfully supports their own position on an issue. Don’t like illegal immigrants in our country? Well then, you’re really going to like the message stating that 70% of women giving birth at Parkland Hospital in Dallas are illegal immigrants. That’s a sure-fire I-told-you-so story. And, guess what! It’s true. But this one isn’t: “Here is a real interview with an illegal immigrant at a protest march in Texas.” That story is a complete fabrication, not at all an interview purportedly aired on local television. But if you liked the first story, you’re going to love the second one, and every other “illegal immigrant” story that comes down the pike. People simply like to read things and listen to things that support their preconceived notions and justify their political positions.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, someone I know to be intelligent forwarded a nasty message about the Heinz Foundation. It was clearly meant to damage John Kerry as a presidential candidate by casting suspicion on the charitable foundation associated with his wife. It didn’t take me long at all to discover the story was seriously flawed and purposely misleading, in many cases pure fiction. Let me repeat that: It didn’t take me long! I have a fact-finding web site bookmarked on my browser. I can usually verify or vilify an outrageous forwarded email in less than a minute. So why don’t other people check the facts? Simply because they like to be bamboozled. This particular message was forwarded by a Bush supporter who had the audacity to write: “I haven’t taken the time to check this out—don’t know if it’s true, but it seemed worth passing along. You can check it out for yourself.” Aha. Yeah. She sent it to about two dozen recipients. How many do you think “checked it out”? Yeah, right. If they supported Kerry, they mouthed an epithet and deleted it. If they supported Bush, they passed it on to another two dozen uninformed American voters eager to be bamboozled.
Here are some classics you’ve probably received, maybe even more than once. I wonder whether you passed them along. Every one is absolutely false:
Barack Obama is a radical Muslim extremist who will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance and was sworn into office on a Koran.
A 13-year-old girl named Ashley Flores of Philadelphia has been missing for two weeks. Pass this picture around by email and she’ll surely be found.
This poem, “Slow Dance,” was written by a terminally ill 7-year-old girl in a New York hospital. It is her dying wish that you pass it on so everyone will live their lives to the fullest.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are charging rent to the Secret Service agents assigned to protect them.
New one-dollar coins were designed to omit the motto “In God we trust.”
Entering your PIN in reverse in any ATM will summon the police.
You should boycott Citgo gas and products because Venezuela’s leader, Hugo Chavez, is a socialist dictator bent on burying the U.S.
You should buy Citgo brand gas and products because Venezuela is a democracy, and the oil profits go to support and educate that country’s poor.
Applebees will send you a $50 gift certificate if you send this email to 9 friends because the restaurant chain wants to become recognized in rural areas.
Aspartame has been proven responsible for epidemics of cancer, brain tumors and multiple sclerosis.
As Texas governor, George W. Bush refused to sell his home to blacks.
Plastic water bottles have been proven to break down into carcinogenic compounds when reused or frozen.
Well, I could go on and on. The point is that, for every one of those false email messages, there was a group of eager readers ready to swallow it whole and, much worse, pass it on without verifying its truthfulness or accuracy. If you dislike Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush, one of those false statements above will appeal to you. You read it, you say, “yeah, I thought that was the case,” and you feel justified or exonerated or in some other way gratified, and so you pass it along to a host of others. It’s so easy—just a few mouse clicks and, Boom! It’s gone! Another badly mauled message or cleverly crafted poison dart is on its journey around the cyber world. I have to wonder whether we have now become so terribly misinformed by this type of lowlife communication that we are, as a net result, less able today to make sound decisions than were our forebears before the “information age.”
Still, it feels so good to be justified or exonerated or supported by what appear to be persuasive statistics! We love to be bamboozled. And it’s so easy to bamboozle others! Just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks…
But wait! In just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks one can also be enlightened! We could actually stop the craziness as easily as it is perpetuated. Simply open your browser and type in this URL: www.snopes.com. When you get to this impressive web site, bookmark it right away. Here is your easy access to objective, reasoned logic backed by solid, documented evidence. You can look up the latest email alert or accusation and immediately get the verdict: True, False, Cannot be Determined, or Mixture. Then you can read the actual email message circulating. (And it can be mighty painful if you’ve just forwarded that piece of junk to 40 friends and there it is, word for word, marked “false.”). You can read the history of the message and its evolution into today’s version. You can learn its actual origin and then read an explanation of how it has been adulterated or why it has caught on like wildfire. Snopes.com gives you the truth behind (or in opposition to) the email message, and then it lists its credible, reliable sources of information. And then you know the truth.
So, all you bamboozlers, I’ve given you the means to put an end to the hateful, inflammatory messages being forwarded to our already overworked email boxes: www.snopes.com. If you choose not to use this tool, that’s your business. Just don’t forward your wild-eyed missives to my mailbox; that’s my business.