No, It's All Too Believable

Previously I mentioned Literally Unbelievable, the web site that shows articles from The Onion that have been shared on Facebook, along with the reactions of Facebook users oblivious to the satirical nature of the articles.

With the American election campaign on the go, The Onion has been doing more political articles, and that's shown up in the articles featured in Literally Unbelievable.  Recent articles getting attention include:

• Obama to appeal to younger voters by appearing in a stoner comedy with Seth Rogen and James Franco
• Paul Ryan thinks he should have told Romney about guy he's dating
• Obama ad accuses Romney of murdering JonBenet Ramsey
• Romney admits he made $32 trillion in 2006
• Obama pledges to repeal health care if re-elected

What's funny/depressing about all this is that the way people talk about these fake and ridiculous articles is pretty much the same way people talk about real issues.  In response to the piece about Romney and his huge earnings, the liberals point to it as evidence of our system corrupted by a manipulative oligarchy for its own ends, while the conservatives jump to his defence saying he deserves it and we should stop demonizing success.  The fact that they're talking about a fictitious story doesn't seem to matter. 

Also, people seem willing to believe so much about the other side.  When the Romney story mentions that he's on the board of 486 Fortune 500 companies, it fits right into the world-view of cynical liberals.  And angry conservatives have such a strong view of Obama as lazy, incompetent and without morals, that they'll go for any story about desperate campaign manoeuvres.

So the moral of this story is that if you've ever suspected that modern politics is just a kind of theatre of confrontation where the substance itself is near irrelevant, well, um, yep.

How Not to Look Foolish on the Internet

Lately I've found a guilty pleasure in Literally Unbelievable, a website that shows people on Facebook who have posted Onion "news stories" without realising they are fake.  Of course, I shouldn't be telling you about it, because the more people know about the site, the more people will know what the Onion is and that they could look foolish if they take it seriously.  And the more people know that, the harder it will be for Literally Unbelievable to find its content.  But even if it disappears, there are still more sites making fun of people being stupid on the Internet.  It's all part of nerds taking over the world:  Remember only a few years ago when the most ridiculed person on the Internet was The Star Wars Kid?  Now you get targeted for lack of knowledge, not lack of cool.

I recently saw this article reporting on, but also criticising the Internet's attacks on ignorant people.  Assuming you didn't click on the link and read the article, I'll summarise that it focuses on the many people on Twitter who were left dumbfounded by Dick Clark's death, apparently not knowing who he was.

Here's what the writer doesn't get:  I have no problem with anyone not knowing who Dick Clark was.  Well, anyone under, say, thirty.  After all, such a person would not have seen American Bandstand, that blooper show from the eighties, or the $X Pyramid.  And since these people are young, they presumably had something to do on New Year's Eve, so they wouldn't have come across him there either.

So why am I angry at these people?  Well, if you're Tweeting, you're on the Internet, and if you're on the Internet, you can learn anything you want instantly.  Instead of Tweeting, "Who is Dick Clark?" you could have gone to Wikipedia and typed in, "Dick Clark," and then you'd know.  That's what the Internet is like: it actually takes fewer keystrokes to cure your ignorance than it does to display it.