I was standing in line at a fast-food joint, waiting for my dose of fried grease, when I happened to overhear the conversation going on behind me. It was a frat-boy (natch) enlightening his pal as to the truth behind the moon landings. They didn’t actually happen, of course. Because the flag was waving, see. And when you speed up the video, it looks like they were running. Or is that when you slow it down, and they seem to be hopping? Well, he didn’t remember the actual argument, but it sure as fuck convinced him. And those craters? They look EXACTLY like the ones at Area 51! AND Area 51 happens to have buildings that are movie studios! At least they look like movie studios! Because if I think it looks like a movie studio, it had damn well better be one! That one NASA guy wasn’t even trying to refute them!
I thought to myself that this person would benefit from a dose of the Straight Dope. Right after that thought came the realization that it wouldn’t help at all. This person had arrived at their beliefs not through reasoned perusal of facts, but through the miracle of modern media. His opinions were supplied via sound bites and slick video productions, and the facts are rarely as sexy or interesting as the competing conspiracy theory. Ignorance needs a fucking boot in the teeth, not knowledge.
Why is the world conspiring to make me injure idiots?
Do a search for the past 30 days in The BBQ Pit with the words “Moon Hoax”. You’ll get about 983862468302972 threads. Old news, I could have cared less then, I care less now.
My point is more this: I never thought it would happen to me. Until very recently, I was unaware that anyone questioned the fact of a moon landing.
Oh, and I’m TERRIBLY sorry I haven’t entertained you. I promise to never, ever, everevereverever post again unless I’m absolutely certain it’s ground-breaking stuff that will provide hours of top-notch entertainment, nay, orgasmic joy to all who read it.
Well, Mercutio aren’t you just the soothing sound of a bubbling brook, the sweet relief of ice cold water on a hot day, the comforting touch of a loved one’s hand?
You could have said just that, without being such an ass.
I understood the OP, unlike some other people here. And I feel your pain. About 35 times a day, give or take, I find people that NEED the Straight Dope, but it’s not really worth the effort.
Case in point:
I was over at a friend’s house, trying to fix her pc. That moronic FOX special came on. I’m sitting there, barely listening, and my husband’s friend is like…TRIPPING…suddenly aware that we never landed on the moon.
I instantly remembered the Straight Dope threads, and tried valiantly to refute that load of horse-hockey, but alas…all to no avail. FOX said it, it was TRUE, and that was that. I was better off arguing with their 8 month old son. He’d have made better sense.
Some people can’t learn. Some people won’t learn. Those are the ones you ignore. If at all possible.
It seems to me that the point of the OP was not to rehash the bullshit concering the Fox “special”, but to make an observation about the gullibility of people today. That they make a decision based on one lousy program and don’t bother to look at both sides of an argument.
I know how that feels. Many of my students were convinced by that same program and were not willing to open their minds to other sides of the issue. When I mentioned that my father was involved with the apollo program, they just said that he mst have been lying to me about it for the last thirty years. :rolleyes:
Somehow I figured I wouldn’t be alone in my frustration
The absolute best part is when people spout the arguments that they’ve been fed. When they can’t make them work, they inevitably fall back on “It convinced me, you should watch it, too.” The validity of an argument is directly proportional to its production value.
I have a story of triumph for you all that will make you feel much better.
A friend of my husband’s freaked out over the Fox special…it totally convinced him. We spent the entirety of his four-year-old nephew’s birthday party “discussing” the different arguments Fox presented.
The next day, I made a trip to The Straight Dope, printed out all the threads referencing the program, printed out all the links contained within those threads, and dropped the whole damn package off to him (it must have been a thousand pages of information).
He read most of it, skimmed through the rest, and HE HAS SEEN THE LIGHT!
He has been straightdoped.
(My friends hate me, by the way, because I’m the one who’s always sending snopes links in reply to email urban legends.)
Let me get this straight; people are noticing that other people are stupid because they believe the moon landing was a hoax after watching a program on Fox? Not to be nasty about it, but doesn’t the message “People are stupid” fall into the category of “really, really old news”? Why is the world conspiring to make you injure idiots? My WAG - because ignorance is easy, and thinking is hard.
(Oh, yeah, thanks, C3, for reminding me about urban legends - I got the cockroach eggs in the tongue glurge today, so I found the urban legends de-bunking site and just sent it to everyone on my mailing list. That felt good )
The very minute that human stupidity in all its myriad forms stops amazing and infuriating me, I’m buyin’ a cabin in Montana. Resignation is the first step on the road to assimilation.
IMO, it’s not so much that large numbers of Americans are willfully ignorant, it’s that they seem to want to believe that every single thing “the government” (whatever that is) does is in fact an attempt to fleece or physically harm them. “The government”, you see, hides working UFOs at Area 51, has stashed military hardware all over the country for the use of invading UN troops, deliberately murdered those kids at Waco, is dusting our skies with with toxic, high-altitude “chemtrails” for no apparent reason, has murdered 200-odd people on behalf of the Clintons, arranged for Ron Brown’s plane to fly into that Balkan mountain, and is planning to stop Saturday delivery of the mail. Oh, wait, apparently that last one IS true.
In any event, don’t worry about it; it doesn’t matter. The vast majority of those dumb bastards who believe the moon landings didn’t take place: do they write their congressman, do they take to the streets to protest the outrageous misuse of their tax dollars by NASA, demand that a committee be formed to investigate one of the greatest conspiracies in history? No, they talk about it idly while standing in line at McDonald’s, then completely forget the whole issue by the time they’ve drained the last of their Super Size Diet Coke.
I got a story I want to tell. It’s a different subject from the OP, but the same topic.
There’s a BP station around the corner from me that I used to frequent. I’d stop there in the morning for coffee, fuel, and chat with the attendants. Kinda a nice morning routine for a while, till one day…
I was getting my coffee one day when I overheard the girl behind the counter going nuts yelling at another customer over the intercom. She was livid because the customer was using a cell phone while pumping gas. The ‘evil’ customer opted for the pay at the pump option and pretty much ignored her and drove off after he was done.
She was still pissed when it was my turn at the register, and told me “I can’t believe that asshole”. I asked her why she was so upset, to which she responded about the whole hysteria about how cell phones cause gas stations to explode. With a bit of my own common sense,(and some input from the SD) I tried to calm her by telling her that wasn’t true. My mistake. She proceeded to go on about how a gas station blew up in Cleveland last year because of a cell phone. I tried to convince her that what she said was just bogus (wouldn’t something like that make at least page 2 of the news?), but no matter what I said she became more adamant.
Her manager overheard us talking and chimed in about how maybe it didn’t happen in Cleveland, but he knows for sure it happened in Aphganistan(sp?). I tried to explain to him what an urban legend that was too, but he became obviously upset that I would challenge their ‘cell phone’ policy.
After that day the manager and the attendant were just short of rude when I stopped in. Amazing how some people can hold a grudge, but no biggie here, I just took my coffee and fuel business elsewhere, it’s not like gas stations are rare around here.
