3 ms·

I wonder who creates these rumors? Why is it people feel the need to lie about, well, anything under the sun?

jerf 13y ago
I particularly enjoyed the one about the rare calendar. You'd think the act of scratching off a month from last year and replacing it with one from this year would be a Clue(TM) that this is not that rare an event....
anigbrowl 13y ago
Fools, trolls, manipulators. A lot of rumors are the result of poor understanding or misinterpretation. For example, there was a big rumor a year or two back that the US government was buying hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, sparking fears of everything from a conspiracy to drive up prices to an imminent imposition of martial law. The basis of the rumor was a government solicitation to bid on ammunition pricing, so that the government could lock in its ammunition purchases for the next few years at a fixed and predictable price, rather than being subject to spot price fluctuations which would make budgeting more difficult and possibly result in higher costs. However, to understand that that the government was looking for (essentially) a call option required a basic knowledge of finance and a fairly high level of reading ability to deal with the 'officialese'. It's not surprising that many people misinterpreted a request for a pricing guarantee as a solicitation for actual supply. There was also a misunderstanding of how much ammunition the government actually uses, with people who cheerfully fire off hundreds of rounds during their own practice sessions overlooking the fact that federal employees who carry firearms also have to take part in training and practice sessions where they expend large quantities of ammunition. More here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp Trolls shouldn't need much explanation; a tradition of spreading outlandish or silly rumors is as old as the hills, and for trolls every day is April 1st. Then you have people with a vested interest in spreading rumors of one sort or another, often for political ends. Negative rumors about 'Obamacare' have been widespread in recent years for obvious reasons, likewise people on the left often expressed their animus towards the previous Republican administration by making up negative stories reflecting their view of how that administration would behave, or what would motivate them in the case of some otherwise random-seeming fact. EDIT: here's an outstanding example right here on HN, today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667068 There are a great many people who are not especially concerned with truth, but with shaping people's behavior in order to bring about a certain result - whether that is getting people to buy a product or a book, or to change the price of a financial asset, or to create a more favorable political environment etc.
protomyth 13y ago
Sometimes, it is with no malice or untruths intended. It is amazing how a story can get screwed up with the telling even without the exaggerations. I think every English class in the country has done the "tell your neighbor" exercise that results in a messed up phrase. A lot of myths started with a grain of truth. "He left it in the woods chained to a tree" -> "He went away, and left it in the woods chained to a tree" -> "He went away, I think to war, and left it in the woods chained to a tree" -> etc.
Theodores 13y ago
Facebook operates at a different intellect level to HN. A friend spends a lot of time on Facebook and, whenever she wants to tell me some fact or a joke I always ask 'is this a Facebook joke/fact?'. Clearly if it is a 'Facebook joke' I won't find it funny, I will just have to suffer boredom, hence I ask first so I can be prepared for some soul destroying trivial nonsense. In social networks there is a sort of recommendation from a personal friend that comes with stuff. So, some mis-fact-rumour just has to get past that threshold of convincing-ness, thereafter it can go on viral. Some rumours start as one story that gets mis-interpreted and then it spreads, there is nothing that the original source can do about it. We all do it '640K RAM, enough', 'Al Gore, invented the interwebs' and so on...
general_failure 13y ago
Fun?

jerf 13y ago

I particularly enjoyed the one about the rare calendar. You'd think the act of scratching off a month from last year and replacing it with one from this year would be a Clue(TM) that this is not that rare an event....

anigbrowl 13y ago

Fools, trolls, manipulators. A lot of rumors are the result of poor understanding or misinterpretation. For example, there was a big rumor a year or two back that the US government was buying hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, sparking fears of everything from a conspiracy to drive up prices to an imminent imposition of martial law. The basis of the rumor was a government solicitation to bid on ammunition pricing, so that the government could lock in its ammunition purchases for the next few years at a fixed and predictable price, rather than being subject to spot price fluctuations which would make budgeting more difficult and possibly result in higher costs. However, to understand that that the government was looking for (essentially) a call option required a basic knowledge of finance and a fairly high level of reading ability to deal with the 'officialese'. It's not surprising that many people misinterpreted a request for a pricing guarantee as a solicitation for actual supply. There was also a misunderstanding of how much ammunition the government actually uses, with people who cheerfully fire off hundreds of rounds during their own practice sessions overlooking the fact that federal employees who carry firearms also have to take part in training and practice sessions where they expend large quantities of ammunition. More here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp Trolls shouldn't need much explanation; a tradition of spreading outlandish or silly rumors is as old as the hills, and for trolls every day is April 1st. Then you have people with a vested interest in spreading rumors of one sort or another, often for political ends. Negative rumors about 'Obamacare' have been widespread in recent years for obvious reasons, likewise people on the left often expressed their animus towards the previous Republican administration by making up negative stories reflecting their view of how that administration would behave, or what would motivate them in the case of some otherwise random-seeming fact. EDIT: here's an outstanding example right here on HN, today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667068 There are a great many people who are not especially concerned with truth, but with shaping people's behavior in order to bring about a certain result - whether that is getting people to buy a product or a book, or to change the price of a financial asset, or to create a more favorable political environment etc.

protomyth 13y ago

Sometimes, it is with no malice or untruths intended. It is amazing how a story can get screwed up with the telling even without the exaggerations. I think every English class in the country has done the "tell your neighbor" exercise that results in a messed up phrase. A lot of myths started with a grain of truth. "He left it in the woods chained to a tree" -> "He went away, and left it in the woods chained to a tree" -> "He went away, I think to war, and left it in the woods chained to a tree" -> etc.

Theodores 13y ago

Facebook operates at a different intellect level to HN. A friend spends a lot of time on Facebook and, whenever she wants to tell me some fact or a joke I always ask 'is this a Facebook joke/fact?'. Clearly if it is a 'Facebook joke' I won't find it funny, I will just have to suffer boredom, hence I ask first so I can be prepared for some soul destroying trivial nonsense. In social networks there is a sort of recommendation from a personal friend that comes with stuff. So, some mis-fact-rumour just has to get past that threshold of convincing-ness, thereafter it can go on viral. Some rumours start as one story that gets mis-interpreted and then it spreads, there is nothing that the original source can do about it. We all do it '640K RAM, enough', 'Al Gore, invented the interwebs' and so on...

general_failure 13y ago

Fun?