This is where it goes from comical to rather depressing. This person was making a principled, uneducated stand against fucking water, because she wasn’t capable of understanding decent sourcing and looking further than the very first thing she saw. You showed her how wrong it was to do this, and her response was not “Whoops, can’t believe I fell for that” but “Fuck you for showing me I was wrong about something important!” That’s just depressing. Like, how do people get like that? What causes this kind of attitude? I don’t get it. You don’t even sound like you were mean to her, either. I just don’t understand, and it’s crucially important that we, collectively, learn how to talk to these people.
But WAIT! Call within the next ten minutes and we’ll DOUBLE your order! That’s right, just $49.95 gets you TWO copies of the answer! You just pay separate shipping!
Like CTers, they’ve discovered something that nobody else knows and they’re going to educate everyone else because they have the real answers that they don’t want you to know, and any attempt to disrupt their twisted narcissistic world view is met with hostility and accusations that you’re either a brainwashed fool or they have “gotten” to you. You’re right, it’s sad. But there’s really nothing you can do but present them with actual facts and hope that eventually it gets through, hopefully before they really harm themselves or someone else.
Pretty much this. When I posted the NPR story where scientists debunk her claims, I received an initial reply of (paraphrased) “I appreciate that you support the idea that there are two sides to every story. I support the side that promotes healthy living and avoiding ingesting toxins and other chemicals.”
I don’t even know if she bothered to look at the article (it was fairly lengthy), or if she just dug in her heels at the mere thought of having her beliefs challenged or even questioned.
Later in the thread, she started talking about how I obviously have an agenda or I wouldn’t oppose a natural lifestyle. I really think she was claiming that I was on some sort of payroll to discredit the Food Babe. I think she saw herself as the sole light in the darkness who would show all of her Facebook friends “The Way.”
I’m half-tempted to ask other (formerly) mutual Facebook friends if she is still posting woo, but it almost seems pointless now.
I wouldn’t have thought the percentage was that high - seeing as how shrieking miracle cures are so much more ratings-worthy than evidence-based medicine.
I don’t do Twitter, and know little about it, but all the comments for this and the cilantro tweet are hostile and call out her bullshit. Is that a select list I’m looking at on Twitter, of only bullshit tweeters? If she’s so popular then where are all the positive tweets in agreement with her?
I saw someone compare these health CTs to the ghosts, demons, devils and spirits of yesteryear. I would agree, except that people still believe in demons that cause illnesses.
I have an idea stuck in my mind: Do you remember that time in history when the vast majority of the population was illiterate and only an “elite” few were keepers of knowledge. Yeah, it’s still the same. Just because people can read and write doesn’t mean they can understand what they read.
BTW, both Elle and Cosmo published articles critical of Food Babe this week, written by people with a scientific background. I guess they learned something after putting Belle The Fraud Gibson on a pedestal.
Nah! Who am I kidding? They are doing it because the blogosphere has turned on FB.
The trouble is, the appeal of this bullshit is that it makes people who desperately want to feel smart think that they’re smart without doing any real work. If you burst that little bubble, they tend to go pop
Paraphrasing Harry Anderson - ‘A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place, and it’s your duty to take it before a dishonest person comes along.’
My emphasis. **Calatin **was - however inevitably and unintentionally - a smart-arse who embarrassed their former “friend”. The reaction was almost inevitable. Calatin engaged in a rationally impeccable process of showing their former “friend” how their lack of understanding of chemistry left them unable to rationally evaluate toxicity claims. If the “friend” was a rational person in the first place, Calatin’s tactic might conceivably have been of value. As it was it just left the “friend” with a feeling that Calatin was a person not to be trusted with the friend’s feelings.
It’s all about trust. Trust is gained by personal warmth and empathy etc. Logic, facts, rationality have nothing to do with it. Even on these boards I can think of at least one poster who emanates charisma and personal warmth, is widely beloved, and peddles woo. I once pulled them up on something and got hammered from all sides for daring to do so.
I like how they put “Mark Simon, director at the Nutritional Oncology Research Institute” (not to mention NOT an oncologist and in fact a well-known purveyor of bullshit) ahead of two actual medical professionals, buried at the very end of the article.
I will admit that, towards the end of the conversation, I wasn’t completely dissatisfied that she so vehemently denounced dihydrogen monoxide. That being said, my initial response to her was just a link to the NPR article, and the comment that the Food Babe does not have the support of the scientific community.
It wasn’t until she started getting self-righteous and indignant that I decided to use the “water” example to show her the error in her thinking. I never misled her or attacked her and I responded with respect. I expected a thread deletion, but the defriending and the blocking really threw me.
[rant]I don’t agree with this “we need to treat them with respect” bullshit.
For fuck’s sake, we need to be shaming these people into the fucking ground.
It’s the “everyone is entitled to their opinion” and “we can disagree, but let’s be civil about it” crap that opens the window for these people to think that what they are doing is acceptable. People just politely nod and accept whatever bullshit comes out of their mouths because they don’t want to be rude. These people are cowards and bullies and they need to be intellectually curbstomped until they learn to use their fucking brains rather than mindlessly following clueless, vapid cunts just because they showed up on Dr. Oz.[/rant]
