Last night I was playing an MMORPG game and a player stood in a capitol city square as an IRL analog to perhaps Hyde Park and the like and regaled all nearby for over 2 hours about the "Satanic Pedophilia" issues in "PizzaGate", one of the latest viral threats. There are many others and the list seems likely to grow.

If you are unfamiliar with PizzaGate it began with neighborhood discontent with a pizza and entertainment venue in Chevy Chase, DC both for it's appeal to youngsters and also because of the owners political involvement in the Democratic party. Some neighbors sought legal means to prohibit live bands after midnight (not sound levels but altogether) as well as proposed removal of gaming such as a ping pong table at the entrance.

Apparently the next step was a Reddit prank which soon expanded to other social media like Facebook resulting from one of the associates email being hacked and then adding in faked photos and emails alluding to Satanic Pedophilia and implicating Hillary Clinton as well. This went viral and out of control rapidly before Old School Journalistic accountability became aware of the story. Since then NY Times, NPR and most responsible, fact checking Journalists found its true roots in fakery and pranking and ran stories debunking the myth, but not before an individual toting an automatic weapon walked into the pizzaria and fired a few shots, thankfully hitting no person. However employees and owners alike receive death threats daily.

Despite the debunking, not only of this incident but past phony allegations of Satanic Pedophilia that destroyed lives, this goes on and is still escalating since largely due to political and religious affiliation, those so inclined seem to trust gossip and hearsay more than the so-called "Liberal Media", ignoring the fact that even as accountable as traditional news may be, they are virtually all owned by a few corporations and decidedly corporate and right wing biased... NPR being one of the very few exceptions.

This is but one example that hints that it is possible to return to the hysteria and mob action common in such events as the Salem Witch Trials, Frankly as long as individuals write off government and accountable news and instead trust in easily faked "evidence" as well as feel empowered by being "God's Chosen People" such irrational lawlessness will increase in quantity and intensity. How we can deal with such a value system and abuses of civilization remains to be seen. How it could unfold will likely get worse before it gets better. What's next, Lynch Mobs?

Yeah, but is the problem the made-up misinformation campaigns, or that people fall for them?

Some hateful stuff on the horizon locally.

http://www.npr.org/2016/12/06/504590...agate-fictions

Nothing like giving a Southern and Northern and Midwestern and Western red neck ammunition for their line of thinking.

I don't consider it falling for it when it confirms what you want to believe in the 1st place. Confirmation of a belief system already in place.

Edit: Meaning above" See! I told ya so!" Types.

2nd Edit: Some of us want to go back to how it was before the civil war. The South will rise again. Have you updated your KKK membership card today?

http://www.conventionofstates.com/newsblog

Gotta keep them others in line. Lynch Mob? How about Lynch States?

IMHO both have responsibility. However there isn't a lot an individual can do about ignorance and prejudice but we can adapt to the new paradigm by some sort of checks and balance system. An example of this has already begun due to a number of suicides as a result of internet harassment. Personally I loved the "Wild West" anarchy of the early Web but either because it was new and precious or because most of the "netizens" on such as CompuServe and BBSes were at least intelligent and disciplined enough to be civilized until AOL came along and the internet became popularized bringing the lowest common denominator down a few notches. I don't relish a rash of Laws specific to the Internet but it seems to me that existing laws can seek new forms of application on the Webz. Accountability is an essential part of civilization, IMHO, and one of the mainstays of the "Social Contract".

Kinda sorta relates to this thread

What's to discuss? ALL news today (in the US anyway) is fake news, full of opinion and bias. Actual news was lost in the US back in the 60's, and destroyed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

That's analogous to asking which is worse, the marks or the con artist. Both are responsible, but I think the con artist is arguably worse, because his or her goal is to deceive.

Too many folks are willing to conclude that "news" that appeals to their prejudices is fact and that "news" that runs counter to them is fiction.

I recently saw a news tory--sorry, I cannot provide a citation--in which a professor showed students an editorial page and the students said it was clearly biased. They paid no heed to the words "Editorial" and "Opinion" at the top of the page; they apparently didn't know that editorials and op-ed columns are inherent opinion.

I don't think those students are alone. I think many persons can't tell the difference between news and opinion, let alone the difference between truth and falsehood.

If I read a column by Cal Thomas on the editorial page, even though I disagree with almost every word he says, I will concede that he is saying them in the right place--the opinion page. I may consider him biased, but he is expressing his opinions, however biased they may be, where they belong, on the opinion page. Were the same article on the front page as news, then it would be an indication of bias on the part of the publication, but the opinion page is the place for opinion, for Pete's sake.

If persons cannot deal with the existence of reasonable opinions with which they disagree, they are not competent to participate in the polity.

As an aside, I have remarked often on this since the beginning of forwarded emails: Persons will believe words they see on a computer screen when they would not believe the same words had they been etched on tablets by divine lightning at the peak of Mt. Sinai.

The stupid. It burns.

More lighter humor relating to this thread

"Satanic paedophilia" charges aren't new and have nothing to do with the Internet. I remember we had a scare over here in the north-east of England, back in the 70s or 80s, I can't quite remember when. For a while everybody believed it and quite a few children were taken away from their parents, who were judged guilty until proven innocent. The "experts" had a test called anal dilatation where they touched a child's anus and, if it expanded, it was supposed to prove that child had been anally abused. Total nonsense of course! Those children were abused all right -- by the medical profession.

Eventually the whole satanic abuse scare was unmasked as the result of a few children fantasising after watching horror films illegally.

Maybe so (this is a detail I actually don't remember), but the adults prompting them to say what they wanted to hear were the biggest part of the problem.

Well, there was that too. The children were given "anatomically correct dolls" to play with and talk about. Personally I think that constitutes sexual grooming. But the satanic details almost certainly came from horror films.

... and apparently such horror films play regularly in fundamentalist minds.

"Unfortunately, the Internet gives everyone 'a bully pulpit.'"

(polite pause while the snickering dies away ...)

But, in the end, it really is the credibility of the person who receives the message: To me, that's pure "ROTFLMAO Bait!" ... and nothing more.

I mean ... yeah, I know that Chelsea exists and that she really does share the DNA of both her parents and all of that, but ...

Anyway, it just means that people aren't wasting their time in the proper way: on LQ!

I agree but let's expand on that to include those that will use bullies to their advantage by whispering in their ear "I heard so-and-so tell people he and his mates were called by your Mom to have a gang BSDM encounter where they put her on a leash and made her eat dog food from a bowl on her hands and knees before they took turns banging her silly". That SHOULD also be "pure rotflmao bait' and perhaps it would be for a large percentage of males but we all know that not a small percentage, especially from pubescent years, would either believe it or feel the need to respond, often with violence, even if it was a malicious untruth.

For reference the man who fired the shots in the Pizzaria drove roughly nine (9) hours from South Carolina to do exactly that because of an already viral piece of gossip. The number of nasty phone calls and internet responses have at times hit hundreds per minute. Likely these are people that for some morbid reason wish to believe that such scurrilous accusations are based in truth, but that doesn't change how effective such things are.


Everyone has different definitions of "proper" and "wasting their time" and given the level of response that such events create, not only on the internet, but throughout History (the internet just being faster and wider) it should not be trivialized. The point is that we have actionable laws regarding libel, defamation of character, harassment and unlawful arrest, etc. but anonymity, while sometimes extremely important can also be used as a weapon that destroys families, careers, and lives.

In all sincerity I can't say I know what would happen if, for example, someone mails a packet of anthrax or illegal drugs to someone's name and address with a fabricated return address and alerts the authorities, but from incidents like this we have all seen (or can see) what happens when the "sender" is legion and more diffuse and difficult to track and the "packet" is fabricated messages and phony or doctored photos. In the hands of the "right people" it is as deadly as a gun aimed at one's head. It's serious and often gets nasty, as this PizzaGate already demon-strates.

We had a big fuss over here in the States about the same time. I'm too lazy at this hour (I've been up late "plaing computer" with VMs and stuff) to check whose scare started first, but I'd be willing to bet it was ours. We seem to be most adept at exporting the very worst aspects of our popular culture. Wikipedia has a good article about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-ca...abuse_hysteria They also have another good article that puts it in historical context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

There was the extra-added element of "investigators" manipulating young "victims" into believing that they remembered things that had not actually occurred.

We didn't need internet "fake news" media to spread the hysteria. The traditional media did it quite skillfully on their own than you very much. Looked at critically, the stories were absurd, but frightened persons tend not to look at things critically. That's why fear is so effective a tool for deception.

But, to go back to the point I made yesterday, the traditional media were taken in. They did not set out to deceive. I argue that those who deceive intentionally bear a degree of culpability that is different, not only in degree, but also in kind. It is one thing to be fooled; it is quite another to be the fooler.