Everybody knows about Fake News, except, maybe, a person who is younger than 6 months old, or a person who has been in a coma for a considerable length of time. We hear about Fake News all the time, either
- by people who are calling out a news source as fake, or
- by people who are calling out the people who are calling out the news source as fake, or
- by people who are calling out the people who are calling out the people who are calling out the news source as fake, yada yada yada.
There seems to be a vicious cycle of people accusing other people of misrepresenting or, flat-out, making stuff up. I’m not here to get political today, but I AM here to tell a story, a story about a Fake Word. My story illustrates the fact that the more people hear something, the more they believe it to be true. First, though, I’ll give you a teaser story, kind of like the short cartoon that used to precede the main feature at the movie theater. Anybody remember those old-timey cartoons? Here’s my opening teaser…
When my kids were teenagers, they were just starting to pay attention to late night talk shows. We were discussing the difference between the Jimmy Fallen show and the Jimmy Kimmel show. I had absolutely no reason to do this, but, in our conversation, after someone said the name Jimmy Kimmel, I added a singsong “dot com.” Don’t ask me why, because I really have no idea. So, in the course of this one conversation, every time someone said his name, I would tack on the phrase, so it became Jimmy Kimmel“.com”. That was a few years ago. To this day, it doesn’t happen very often, but, if someone says Jimmy Kimmel’s name, someone in my family always finishes it off by singing “.com”. Maybe Jimmy Kimmel does have a website, I don’t know. But, I think it’s a completely meaningless reference, a Fake Word, which I made up on the spot. Yet, it lingers.
Now, for the Main Feature….
Another Fake Word episode occurred when I was in high school. My friend and I had been discussing slang and common phrases. We wondered how odd expressions became so ingrained in our vocabulary. We wondered how slang words took off, so that everyone understood them and used them. Then, we decided to conduct an experiment. We cooked up a plan to make up a phrase and see if we could get it to spread. Here again, I have no idea why, but we decided to start calling people Worms. We started randomly calling out to our friends, saying "You are a Wooormmm! You look like a Wooormmm!" We also started dropping the word casually, as in, “Hey you Worms, come over here!”; “What’s happening, Worms?; “You are such a Worm!” At first, we got lots of sideways looks and quizzical stares, but we kept at it, throwing the phrases out whenever we could. After about a week, we finally heard it—someone yelled “Hey Worms!” We could hardly contain our excitement!
Now, in high school, I was in the band, and band kids are notoriously fun-spirited with a side of geekiness thrown in. So, we had a perfect petri dish for our experiment. As the weeks wore on, more and more kids joined in the fun, until, eventually, the whole band was carrying on about Worms. We noticed that within the group of kids, we didn't hear the phrase "You are a Wooormmm" as much as we heard people call each other Worms. So, the word, not the phrase, was what spread around. The word spread outside the fringes of the group, but not far. Most of the non-band kids figured it must be some inside joke that they didn’t understand. The ultimate victory for us was when our band director, a strict, no-nonsense, hard-staring, don’t-cross-me woman stood at the director’s podium with her arms raised and said, “OK, you Worms, let’s start practicing.” That was the finest acknowledgement –we had succeeded! Our Fake Word was real!
My friend and I did not broadcast the guts of our experiment or admit that we were the ones that started it. We encouraged the word to spread organically, without revealing its origin. It was more fun to secretly watch the word take off and see where it landed. We had created trendy new slang, and we were thrilled. As busy teenagers, after a few months, the thrill was gone, and we lost interest. When we heard a younger Freshman mention Worms, we asked “Are you still saying that? Nobody does that anymore.” High schoolers can be cruel.
Based on my extensive (not) research, I suggest that people are likely to start believing something if they continue to hear it over and over. I see you looking over at those other people and nodding your head. Don’t look over at them. I’m talking to you. Sorry, that’s me at the mirror trying to keep my own attention, before I tell everyone else what’s wrong with them. Here’s the thing, people: everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to evaluate information on its merits, not on its repetition. We can all be subject to believing things that we hear often, and sometimes, things that we hear loudly. Just because it's presented repeatedly and/or forcefully doesn’t make it true. If Fake News exists, and Fake News spreads, there very well may be orchestrators who sit behind the scenes with tented fingers, nodding their heads as they watch the spread. I was certainly an orchestrator of the Fake Word. And, I will admit, it was a power rush.
So, before you criticize those other people for their beliefs, take a minute to analyze your own beliefs. Have any Fake Words crept in? It’s often easier to accept them than to challenge them. Seems like Critical Thinking Skills (thank you, liberal arts education) are needed now, more than ever. If we are vigilant, I think we can learn to dismiss phony information, no matter how many times we hear it.
I have faith in you Worms. Let’s do it, and encourage others to do it, too. Wanna help us spread the word, Jimmy Kimmel? “.com”