Guerrillafunk.com are chuckling mightily. They pulled off a really good April Fool's hoax that netted a great catch of eager liberal/progressive type fools LIKE ME who salivate at the sight and smell of juicy tidbits like this purpored quote from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
So it goes like this. When we have a pre-existing opinion about something, such as an opinion that the Bush administration is filled to the brim with power mad, neo-crazed, liberty stomping, immoral, greedy, criminal, incompetent evildoers, we are likely to embrace information that reinforces our opinions. And the stronger the reinforcement, the more passionate the embrace. Maybe a little voice tells us something isn't quite right with this, but we ignore it because we want to believe. We want our opinions to be validated by fact, and we are hungry for each new piece of evidence that we were right all along. We are sitting ducks for clever hucksters, disinformation dissemblers, and April Fools pranksters.
Kudos to guerrillafunk.com. Here's the lessons I've learned from this experience.
1. I'm not nearly as internet savvy as I thought I was.
2. I'm more than willing to believe the worst about people I already don't like.
3. It's very likely I'll be fooled again sooner or later.
4. I don't care. All my opinions are still 100% valid and everything I write is Basically Sensible (bs).
(posted by patti)
