Bedtime Stories

Today I went to a GW meet; the first since I got back, my only second time ever. It is quite strange, though not in any negative way, to see a bunch of people you know only by their online nicknames. Even face-to-face, we call each other by nicknames. It’s just convenient, I suppose, than to try to remember the names of people you only meet a few times a year. I am terrible with names, anyway. The pseudo-secret venue, communicated directly to those who were coming via text message/SMS, was one of the newer but more peaceful shopping malls in KL, thankfully. I would have hated it if the meeting was set up at Suria KLCC, like that one time I went before.

As can be expected, some took the opportunity of the meet to seek confirmation for stories, rumors, urban-legends, if you like; that they have heard before: do we have this or that and how many, did this or that actually happened and how etc. I just sit there and listen.

The worst thing anyone can do with a rumor is to tell it to someone else. It doesn’t really matter whether there is a grain of truth in it, or totally outlandish; the damage is in the spread. Rumors are by definition unsubstantiated and incomplete. We like to think that there must be at least some truth in it, like how a legend is based on an historical event, and fill the gaps in the account with our own imagination.

Like a terrible secret, a rumor is hard to keep, so we spread them around. Sometimes it is out of concern – “just in case it is true” – and sometimes it is just for fun – “what harm will it do?” More harm than good, really. Some rumors create panic, like bomb scares, but generally rumors are like waves on a beach. Slowly but surely the erosion changes the shoreline. Just as we cannot take back our words, one cannot un-hear a rumor. Some rumors are in fact slanders; worse than adultery, according to the Prophet.

Many people argue that they don’t mean to spread rumors and slander, but just telling the [real] story; same difference. Some rumors are started off by certain parties for their own not-so-innocent motives, so by spreading them around we are only turning ourselves into willing tools for someone else's sinister machination.

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933 - 1945

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PS: I don’t care for Akademi Fantasia (AF). But doesn’t anybody else think that the daily Diari AF is turning people into voyeurs? I’m pissed that my mum is so caught up in it.