Some words have more than one possible meaning. The word “average” is one such word.
From Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary:
Also:
Also, check out the terrific book “How to Lie with Statistics”. It mentions that one should always be wary of claims about an “average” because one never knows precisely which average is being referred to.
I don’t understand this. I always try to assume that a person forwarding an urban legend, or posting on on a MB, is just uninformed, and I try to nicely correct them. And every time I get called a bunch of nasty names because they were “just trying to help,” “just trying to do something NICE,” etc. Morons.
Wow, is this ever accurate. The two people that constantly send the Bill Gates/Outback/Applebees/Gap/Honda crapmail fit this description exactly. Even though I keep sending them the Snopes links to let them know they shouldn’t expect a box of clothes from the Gap anytime soon, they still keep sending them. Why this particular group seems to be more gullible to the rumors I don’t know, maybe it’s because they’re more trusting and less likely to believe something that fabulous couldn’t be untrue?
BTW, just in case anyone is wondering about the J.R. “Bob” Dobbs quote, bear in mind who we are talking about.
Slack!
Many urban legends have one or more of the following attached to them:
In the first case, for some reason it’s become established that a joke isn’t funny unless it purports to be true. For some reason this makes it much funnier than simply a joke to many people. I see this a lot of time on the “jokes” mailing list we have here at work - something that is quite clearly just a joke has grown a preamble or conclusion claiming that it “really happened”. My response to this is often to say, “This really happened in a bar in Chicago! A skeleton walked in and asked for a beer and a mop!”
In the second case, many people feel that the lesson to be leanred (how special everyone is, how great things can come from small beginnings, the value of homespun wisdom, how great God is) overrides any possible untruthfulness to the story. Back when I used to accompany my wife to church, at around Christmas, the preacher told a story about him spending the winter at a farm and trying to get some ducks to go into the barn. I thought it was a very nice story, and later found out it’s a standard story told by preachers everywhere. This preacher knew he was ‘lying’ by representing himself as the subject of the story, but in this case he clearly felt the lesson was more important than the facts.
In the third case, what you often see attached to the story, and what people respond when you debunk it to them, is, “maybe this isn’t true, but if it is, spreading the word will help people!” The general feeling is that nothing is lost from spreading this warning around because it MIGHT be true and thus might help someone avoid danger or injury. Of course, as we’ve seen, people in general have no problem living in a constant state of fear and paranoia if they think it’s making them safer.
As an addendum to that third case, it also applies to Nigerian scams, chain emails, and so forth. Sure, Nike MAY not give shoes to orphans for every forward the email gets, but if it IS legit, they’d be heartless fools NOT to forward it, and what’s the harm in forwarding it, even if it turns out not to be true? The Nigerian scam I really don’t know about, because NOTHING in it sounds remotely realistic to me. I’ve no idea how people fall for this, but they do, which is why it’s still around.
I’ve stopped debunking urban legends I receive and just delete them. I know that’s the equivalent of going AWOL in the War on Ignorance, but I’m so tired of people being outraged because I’m trying to help them. I’ve never had anyone react positively to a snopes link or Cecil column. I may as well just respond to the messages with, “Your mother was a whore” because the reaction would be the same.