# Why is #FauciLied trending? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 11, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602 "2022-01-11T18:50:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2022, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/61 "2022-01-20T16:12:20Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > to Anthony Fauci Way or something. “Anthony Fauci Was Right Way”. Might as well really rub his nose in it. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.winston_oboogie/32/2945_2.png) [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Winston_OBoogie)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2022, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/62 "2022-01-20T16:27:25Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > from Carl Sagan, whose prophetic genius becomes more stark by the day: > > > ‘I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or my grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantative content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.’ > > What we are seeing is people clutching at social-media driven rumour, rather than just woo woo, as Sagan predicted, but it’s the same thing really. I am absolutely gobsmacked. I’ve never heard this before. I am in awe. Sagan had it 100% correct. I don’t have to understand the chemistry involved in creating Atorvastatin, I trust the men of science have created and tested properly. I question if it is removing the cause of heart disease or just lessening a symptom of something else, but the net effect is that it works at lowering cholesterol, which is a net positive. I can question the AMA’s decision to lower the “acceptable” levels, (is it truly for the general health of the population, or is it to keep people going to their physician more often?), but I know that the science is there and that it serves a purpose. Carl Sagan died in 1996 - well before “the web” became “THE WEB”; well before social media. That “celebration of ignorance” line just hits home so freakin’ hard. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2022, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/63 "2022-01-20T17:56:58Z")
I did put “logical” in quotes, after all. But yeah, it’s almost a sort of “exception proves the rule” sort of mentality on their part. If they can dream up a plausible (to them) way that it could have gone down, then they view that as proof that it happened that way, because it’s not coincidence at that point or something. But yeah, to anyone sane, it’s almost the exact opposite- a chain of highly implausible or coincidental events that makes the person look crazy, not like they figured something out. ---
**Author:** ![SingleMalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/singlemalt/32/3961_2.png) [@SingleMalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleMalt)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2022, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/64 "2022-01-20T18:29:30Z")
“What a surprise! The look of terminal shock in your eyes! Now things are really what they seem. No, this is no bad dream.” ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/65 "2022-01-21T00:15:19Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > I don’t. They aren’t the ones that can see the cliff they are clearly driving us towards. They live in blissful unawareness of the consequences of their actions. Yeah, you’re right. I suppose what I meant was that I don’t think they are bad people, they just out of their depth. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/66 "2022-01-21T00:56:26Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > …And it makes conspiracy theories attractive because once you have gone down the rabbit hole, you can feel like you know what’s going on by manufacturing or believing in a simple, childish, factually unconstrained narrative. Yes, the lie that ‘it’s all simple’ is emotionally appealing to those who prefer a life lived without effort. It requires no work. All you have to do is accept what the conspiracy-monger tells you. These conspiracy theories always contain flattery of the target believers: ‘_only YOU are smart enough to see that the world is simple and only YOU are smart enough to reject the “experts” who tell you that the world is complex_.’ Humans crave flattery, and con artists/conspiracy theorists always include a heaping helping of self-serving delusion in every ‘_only WE know the truth of it!_’ message. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/67 "2022-01-21T02:09:39Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > It requires no work. All you have to do is accept what the conspiracy-monger tells you. It also helps that most of the professional conspiracy mongers will also validate just about any stupid idea one of their fans comes up with, so no matter how stupid a person is, they feel like they’re “contributing”. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/68 "2022-01-21T02:21:06Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > It also helps that most of the professional conspiracy mongers will also validate just about any stupid idea one of their fans comes up with, so no matter how stupid a person is, they feel like they’re “contributing”. A couple of times in the moderately distant past I was sufficiently bored to join anti-vax facebook groups and post increasingly crazy anti-vax shit to see how far I could go before they finally began to doubt what I was saying. When they finally reached that point, I admitted I had been making stuff up all along, and pointed out that they had largely believed me, and that there was no more evidence for their core beliefs than the nonsense I had been making up. At that point I was insta-banned and all my posts deleted, because cognitive dissonance is a bitch. You can go a long, long way, down the path of getting people to believe crazy shit if you write as One of Them and a True Believer. This is not by any means an original pastime - I got the idea from _Illuminatus!_ ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/69 "2022-01-21T03:09:35Z")
> [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](#): > > Carl Sagan died in 1996 - well before “the web” became “THE WEB”; well before social media. That “celebration of ignorance” line just hits home so freakin’ hard. Yup, Sagan nailed it, but the horrifying slide into a new Dark Age we find ourselves tumbling down was essentially foreseen way back in 1985 in Neil Postman’s [“Amusing Ourselves to Death.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death) Postman’s thesis addresses the deleterious effect of television, it’s true, since he wrote the book before social media took over dominance of our culture, but it seems clear that TV helped to lay the groundwork for what we contend with now. > Postman asserts the presentation of [television news](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_news) is a form of entertainment programming; arguing that the inclusion of theme music, the interruption of commercials, and “talking hairdos” bear witness that televised news cannot readily be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on visual images to “sell” lifestyles. He argues that, owing to this change in public discourse, [politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) has ceased to be about a candidate’s ideas and solutions, but whether he comes across favorably on television. Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase “now this”, which implies a _complete absence_ of connection between the separate topics the phrase ostensibly connects. [Larry Gonick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gonick) used this phrase to conclude his _Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication_ , instead of the traditional “the end”. > > Postman refers to the inability to act upon much of the so-called information from televised sources as the [information-action ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-action_ratio). He contends that “television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation—misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing”. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/70 "2022-01-21T04:31:51Z")
Now this! 🙂 I was gonna link the #FauciLied twitter thread, but then I figured there’s not enough brain beach to go around. It exists, if one’s morbidly curious enough. Kinda risible, infuriating, disconcerting - all in one. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/71 "2022-01-21T04:35:29Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I was going to suggest that when he’s ready to step down, Fauci be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest U.S. civilian award) for helping lead us through the pandemic and surmounting the volleys of bullshit thrown his way. But it turns out that he’s _already_ been awarded that medal in 2008 for advancing our knowledge and treatment of HIV/AIDS. > > So we’ll have to come up with something else. Furthermore, the Presidential Medal of Freedom award has been thoroughly buggered and contaminated since Trump gave one to Rush. Nobody can ever feel _honored_ again to get this. So we need to invent a new unsullied award now because of that. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/72 "2022-01-21T04:58:52Z")
Presidential Recipient of Greatness which Dream Theatre might appreciate. ---
**Author:** ![yarblek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/71e660/32.png) [@yarblek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yarblek)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/73 "2022-01-21T05:41:19Z")
> [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](#): > > I question if it is removing the cause of heart disease or just lessening a symptom of something else, but the net effect is that it works at lowering cholesterol, which is a net positive. I think the root cause of heart disease is unhealthy lifestyles, namely an insufficiently physically active one along with a truly godawful _diet_, the latter being much more imortant than the former. But you probably knew this already but just in case someone else was wondering about it, my 2¢. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/74 "2022-01-21T13:18:33Z")
The Joseph R. Biden First Annual Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/75 "2022-01-21T13:32:05Z")
The Way Smarter Than Donald Trump Award. Mind you, that’s a long list of qualified recipients. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2022, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/76 "2022-01-21T13:58:43Z")
> [@EddyTeddyFreddy](#): > > Yup, Sagan nailed it, but the horrifying slide into a new Dark Age we find ourselves tumbling down was essentially foreseen way back in 1985 in Neil Postman’s [“Amusing Ourselves to Death.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death) And Asimov called it even before that. From an essay in 1980: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602/77 "2022-01-23T01:23:49Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > And Asimov called it even before that. Very true. And the strain of American embrace of ignorance had also been noted in 1963’s best-seller by Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life._ \* And both H. L. Mencken, in the early 20th century, and Mark Twain, before that, had a thing or two to say about the large portion of the population that disliked being expected to know anything and disliked even more those who _did_ know something. All added their own emphasis to the topic. \*from the wikipedia article on the book: > [@](#): > > …Hofstadter described anti-intellectualism as “resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.”… > > Also, he described the term as a view that “intellectuals…are pretentious, conceited… and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive … The plain sense of the common man is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise.” … > > [@Senegoid](#): > > Furthermore, the Presidential Medal of Freedom award has been thoroughly buggered and contaminated since Trump gave one to Rush. Nobody can ever feel _honored_ again to get this. So we need to invent a new unsullied award now because of that. I suggest the _ **Winning Excellence Recognizing Each Justly Earned Credit That Deserves Tribute** _ award be handed out by all future Presidents. short for WE REJECT DT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-faucilied-trending/957602.md?page=3)