What surprised me the most was people willing to go along with a lie. Human memory is a pretty faulty and malleable thing, but this level of confusion as was cited at one point in the article? I think it requires someone to be either consciously lying or have utter disregard to the value of what they're saying. It's one thing to repeat a lie because you didn't know the information wasn't true (though I'd consider providing confidence estimates on information you repeat as a basic human decency); it's something else entirely to repackage the lie and sell it as something you vouch for personally. These people are bullshit amplifiers.
How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
51–60 of 118 posts
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh. I see this more as god-tier trolling. We have no way to easily tell if this piece is a total lie or a long delayed admission of truth. I'm certainly not ever going to research this to determine if it is valid. And that is what makes the troll god-tier. The nugget of truth he alludes to is then instantly suspect for everything now. Though I may forget that the internet of made up of dogs impersonating people from…
Grandparent probably doesn't consider trolls to be "good people". Of course, with the wisdom of experience one finds that trolling is just another form of rhetoric, neither "good" nor "bad". Good people will troll us to the truth at least as often as bad people will troll us to butthurt.
Liars, not trolls. I mean I guess there's overlap but it's the lying I'm calling out. The author seems continually surprised and concerned that people would believe lies about history, but that's not new or surprising or even interesting. In fact that's why we each have a responsibility to tell the truth.
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#53I can't help but read this like: Let me show you how dangerous sidewalks are by telling you the story about the time I went for a walk while swinging a spiked bat at every passer by. It was great fun, but it demonstrates why sidewalks are dangerous.
How many articles have had the premise "You can't trust wikipedia, because it's full of lies! Why, just look at this handful of lies I've put on there!"
The difference is these lies survived for years and were repurposed all the while no one actually bothered to verify them.
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#54What surprised me the most was people willing to go along with a lie. Human memory is a pretty faulty and malleable thing, but this level of confusion as was cited at one point in the article? I think it requires someone to be either consciously lying or have utter disregard to the value of what they're saying. It's one thing to repeat a lie because you didn't know the information wasn't true (though I'd consider pro…
Information that's mostly true with a few lies thrown in is very hard to verify. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#55That's great. I love how myths can still be created and spread in this Internet age.
Another example : around 2005 someone made a playlist for himself of some Mars Volta b-sides and called it "A Missing Chromosome" [1]. Somehow it spread on P2P networks, was even listed on Wikipedia in the band's discography section with a back story etc.
I still have it in my collection under that name with the art etc and don't see the need to correct it.
A forum I'm in maintains a list of some fake things they put in Wikipedia. It's harder to do these days but some are still there and we joke that some parts may have found their way in some student school work.
1. http://forum.thecomatorium.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=105...
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#56I don't think it's the internet's fault. In 1941 a couple of friends made a few phone calls to newspaper sports desks and concocted a college football team: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/sports/ncaafootball/the-41...
Yes, was certainly possible to dupe people in this way before the Internet. This Wikipedia page contains some relevant examples:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
As a side note, it'd be funny if one of the stories on that page turned out to be made up.
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#57What I think is most interesting is the people who all claim to "remember" these lies. Are they knowingly claiming to remember something they never saw to appear more knowledgeable or is their memory shaped by these lies they read? The latter is scarier.
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#58This reminds me of the time some fangirl invented an entire season of Inspector Gadget with her fan character in a prominent role as a love interest for Gadget -- and tried to pass it off as if it really happened, replete with faked screenshots of Gadget and her invention. The IG fan community actually took the bait for a while before she was outed.
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#59I know this is pitched as an experiment about the internet, but I think it is an even more telling experiment about the malleability of human memory.
I'm still wondering if its really the malleability of human memory or our need to fit in / social pressure to conform ?
Re: How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
#60I can't help but read this like: Let me show you how dangerous sidewalks are by telling you the story about the time I went for a walk while swinging a spiked bat at every passer by. It was great fun, but it demonstrates why sidewalks are dangerous.
If it was just "there are lies on the Internet - I just posted some!" Then yeah. To me this story is more how they propagate. Who knew Netflix didn't get their metadata from the production company itself?
My guess is that they're filled in by low-paid (or unpaid) interns.
I'm especially wary of anything that has even a touch of marketing involved with it. Especially on social media. You know how all those photos with words are made - be it dietary advice or philosophy quotes or whatever? I had some ideas, but wasn't really sure until my SO did an internship with a social media marketing company.
It's literally: 1) Google for some keywords on the topic you need, 2) take the first article or blog post that pops up, 3) find a good enough quote or idea on it, 4) pick a random picture from the Internet, 5) stick the two together in Photoshop or Paint.NET, 6) spam the living shit out of all your channels with it.
It's that. Zero research. And preferably done by unpaid interns.