I have a question…do hoaxes stop being hoaxes if enough people believe? What brought this to mind was a recient one concerning gasoline prices and supposedly someone had an idea on how to combat them…boycot the largest of suppliers. The thinking was if they cannot sell at the inflated prices they would lower their price and the other companies would be forced follow suit. OK…sounds good so why is this a hoax? Don’t know but I recieved an email from CNET saying it indeed was a hoax. However…why wouldn’t it work if enough people believed? And if they did it and it worked as planned would it still be a hoax?
Any thoughts? And any other examples?
Good question… perfect for In My Humble Opinion.
I think CNET was wrong in labeling it a hoax, as it wasn’t really a deliberate spreading of an untruth. If they had said gas prices are so high because most of the worlds supply is being use to make longevity formula for the Clintons, that would be a hoax. Probably.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that the one brand boycott wouldn’t work. If everyone started buying their gas at other stations, those stations would raise their prices, until the price difference was so great that people would drop the boycott. Prices would then return to brand equilibrium.
There are aslo a couple other less likely models,that go a little more into psychological economics, but they also don’t result in net price reductions.
Scott
Some hoaxes manifest themselves as real via self-fulfilling prophecy. Example: an email hoax that warns of a virus which will make your computer sterile & copy itself to other users in your outgoing messages. “Be on the lookout for attachments labeled good times or whatever and send this warning to everybody you know.”
Even though no such virus may exist, the mass hysteria resulting from the hoax email flood creates a situation much worse than the alleged virus would have.
I cannot find offhand the Cnet source but here is the ZDNET URL claiming substantially the same thing…that the gas email is a hoax… http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?100629:5794686
No. From http://www.m-w.com:
1 : an act intended to trick or dupe : IMPOSTURE
2 : something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication
3 : Hi, Opal!
If a thing is false, it tends to be false regardless of how many people believe it.
“Hoax” is, perhaps, the wrong word. “Silly” might be a better one.
Well, they’d have to do more than believe; they’d actually have to act on it.
For a pretty good rebutal of this one, in particular, check:
OK …I had thought I was clear in that the gasoline “hoax” was an example of my underlying question that is-can hoaxes um lose their hoaxiness if enough people believe in them(and yes I do know "belief is not enough they must also act upon that belief)…but for the sake of argument I will attempt to defend my example…first off supply and demand in this industry I think we can agree has little to do with the price of gasoline…proof of this is in the fact that there only has to be a rumor of some unrest in the middle east and the price goes up…supply has not changed…demand has not changed yet the price still goes up immediately…you might say the oil companies are preparing for a change in supply but why then doesn’t the price go back down just as fast once the “crisis” is over?..also where I live if you cross the border you can buy gasoline for up to 25 cents cheaper per gallon…supply and demand?.. and another thing is in my state of Wisconsin there is a law that states that a gas station cannot sell gasoline for less than a few cents more than they pay for it keeping all the stations equal(the idea behind this was to help mom and pop stations from becoming extinct-too late)…anyone care to guess just how much oil companies loooooooove this law and fight to keep it?..and when you think about it isn’t that kind of odd?..all kinds of stores have loss leaders to get people in and buying the high mark up items but not gasoline…hell cigarettes are occasionally sold for less than they cost just to get people in the store…never gas though…but I digress…that url you provide answers some questions and begs others…it assumes that the boycotted company will just sit on their hands while all this is going on…ignoring the bad press and loss of revenue…this I doubt…part of it I believe is a simple childlike tantrum at being kept from Alaska and other places for environmental concerns …possibly hoping the people will demand their congressperson open these areas so the prices will go down… in my opinion the oil companies raise prices because they can and they all do it together and supply and demand means less here than in almost any other industry… we the end user have no option other than bending over and spreading them
magi, what the hell are you on about? Condense your post and put in some paragraph breaks, and maybe someone can answer.