When There is no Excuse

In a previous article I mentioned Peggy.

She was an unsophisticated woman who had no real access to information so believed what she was told.

It happened at Sharon’s Bar.

Three guys who had been on Farm Work in Louisiana were talking about what they had experienced. Noticing Peggy’s avid face, they began to decorate, fabricate and thoroughly enjoy telling the ‘tall tale’.  They mentioned snakes and wolves and one of them, Kangaroos.

While the other two choked on their drinks, this one discussed how the vicious kangaroos would come out of no where and punch the cane workers unconscious.

Peggie believed every single word that was uttered.

When she left Sharon’s bar, she looked around, just in case there was a vicious kangaroo lurking.

She told everyone about the vicious Kangaroos which attacked Farm Workers.  To Those who tried to dissuade her she would bleat…

“A Farm Worker Told Me!” and of course, he would know.

Now although we laughed at Peggy, we did appreciate she was a semi-literate woman who had never been out of Kingston. That she had no access to knowledge and didn’t have the ‘tools’ to verify. She believed what she was told.

This is different from the person who has Internet Access and can do searches, and verifications, and explore so as to prove/disprove information.

Peggy has an excuse, the person with Internet Access does not.

To spread lies and fabrications as if they are true is a fun thing to do.  Spoofing, doing the comedy routine. It stops being fun when people actually believe it. When people swallow hoaxes and refuse to release their grip.

The fact many of the stories put on Facebook, (which got it labled ‘Fakebook’) were invented by young men living in Macedonia.  They cashed in on the reader’s stupidity and posted item after item lauding Trump. They, like Ulsterman before them, found what people wanted to read and gave it to them.

Those youths in Macedonia did nothing to hide their I.P. address. Anyone could have found out where that these sites with American sounding names were located.

The sites were Networked to Facebook. They’d be clicked on, and people would arrive at the Macedonia site and read the fabrications published there.  All the little Ad Sense coin would pile into Macedonian pockets.

Something as simple as checking from ‘where it comes’ was never done.   A site which is publishing American Political information is never checked for its bona fide.

That is because those who read the rubbish didn’t have the brains to check.

Unlike Peggy, those who believed what the Macedonians had written, had computers and Internet Access to check. Unlike Peggy, they were supposed to be able to read to the extent that they could catch inconsistencies and impossibilities.

Yet, just like Peggy they believe in vicious Kangaroos in the cane fields of Louisiana.