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Another way to argue badly
Jun. 9th, 2009 11:14 pmJohn Cole's "The Fact That I Am Completely Wrong Is Just More Proof How Right I Am". Great observation of a pattern I have seen in the wild elsewhere: someone passes along a false story as proof of an important point, and then, when it is pointed out that ten seconds on Snopes would have shown it to be false, defends it.
The particular piece of bunkum was a right-winger telling a story about a person wrecking a recreational vehicle by putting it on cruise control and stepping into the back to fix a drink, then suing the manufacturer, thus proving that lawsuits have gotten out of control. When many people told the right-winger that this is a well-known urban legend, he doesn't apologize, but says,
Besides the fact that this is a great calling-out of a terrible behavior (even if on a small scale), I'm posting about this because I know I heard this 30 years ago. I was in high school, and it was told about "an Iranian Prince" driving his new American luxury car. I know I was in high school because I heard the joke from my Iranian friend Ali, with whom I lost touch after he left for college. (He was a year ahead of me, so I heard this no later than 1981.) So, yes, this urban legend has been around at least that long.
(Postscript: Cole solicits suggestions for naming this pattern. I liked, from the comments, both "gullibullshit" for the attitude and "bunk/debunk/rebunk" for the process.)
Via.
The particular piece of bunkum was a right-winger telling a story about a person wrecking a recreational vehicle by putting it on cruise control and stepping into the back to fix a drink, then suing the manufacturer, thus proving that lawsuits have gotten out of control. When many people told the right-winger that this is a well-known urban legend, he doesn't apologize, but says,
Thirty, 40 or 50 years ago, no one in their right mind would have believed the Merv Grazinski urban legend possible, but not so today.
Besides the fact that this is a great calling-out of a terrible behavior (even if on a small scale), I'm posting about this because I know I heard this 30 years ago. I was in high school, and it was told about "an Iranian Prince" driving his new American luxury car. I know I was in high school because I heard the joke from my Iranian friend Ali, with whom I lost touch after he left for college. (He was a year ahead of me, so I heard this no later than 1981.) So, yes, this urban legend has been around at least that long.
(Postscript: Cole solicits suggestions for naming this pattern. I liked, from the comments, both "gullibullshit" for the attitude and "bunk/debunk/rebunk" for the process.)
Via.
