Assignment 1-4

A conversation with a friend about the upcoming football games over the weekend took a rather odd turn. “Did you hear Obama is going to disclose the existence of aliens?” he asked me. “What?” I replied “Yeah, I heard from several reliable sources Obama is going to tell the American people that aliens do exist and is going to make public all of the files the government has on it.” Like I said this is an odd conversation topic that was seemingly pulled from thin air as I was moments before predicting Sunday afternoon outcomes, and talking Bengals strategy. But aliens? Come on.

Before I go any further I wan to make one thing clear; this post is not about aliens. I repeat not about aliens. Rather this post is about how information travels and how rumor is taken as fact, and no one blinks twice. My friend had said that he heard from several reliable resources of the alien revelation, but I suspect what meant to say was that he read it on a blog. That is the thing the internet has created a place where false information or slanted viewpoints can be displayed for all to see, and no one is there to correct or fact check any claims or ideas. The use of Wikipedia is a prime example of what can be passed as truth. I could log into Wikipedia and make an entry that on such and such date Obama announced to the world that aliens existed and later the president and the alien leader went to McDonalds’. It the same old saying that you can’t believe everything you read, but the internet has taken it to a whole new level.

I think this is a reoccurring theme in popular culture. Opinion or flat out rumor being taken as fact, and the truth skewed and the message spread like wildfire. About a month ago I was told by numerous friend and co workers that Lady Gaga was a transsexual. My reply to this was “Who is lady gaga?” The point to this that the rumor about the artist gender reached me before I was even aware of who (she?) was. It is a funny thing public opinion. Now it doesn’t matter if the rumor is proved to be true or false, it has been talked about so much that every time I hear about lady gaga I immediately associate her name with the rumor of her gender. It’s the same thing with the Obama/alien story my friend told me about. This morning when I was reading the news I half expected a headline about alien visitors, and mark my words after reading this you may too. I believe its called the power of suggestion.

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