Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell
Jun. 16th, 2011 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI have a really basic rule: the best way to detect a lie is to investigate its intersection with reality. If they don't match, well, _maybe_ it was a mistake. If the source doesn't match consistently, well, _maybe_ they're just really kinda foolish. But probably -- especially if it helped the source -- it was a lie and probably -- if there is a pattern of benefit -- they are a liar.
I also use non-verbals, but too many people believe the crap they spew.
It turns out that I _hugely enjoy_ lies being exposed and the chaos and disarray that occurs among those that believed the lie. I'm fairly certain this makes me a bad person (or at least worse than I would be without this characteristic), but I do try to be honest about my basic feelings. "Switch it off" should only be used very occasionally.
The last couple of days have been Fabulous for Exposing Untruth.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/retired-military-man-posing-as-lesbian-on-blog-pretended-to-be-deaf-widowed-with-twins/story-e6frf7jx-1226075461315
Also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/bill-grabers-full-interview-im-not-gay-but-i-want-gay-people-to-be-equal/2011/06/14/AGNLlpUH_blog.html
You can see the lie in the headline: retired military man posing as deaf, lesbian, widowed mother of twins. Really? Really? Anyone believed this? It's like a _failed_ high concept movie idea: you get a stack of index cards with trendy topics, shuffle it, pick a number between 1 and 10, select that number of cards, and build some very silly and traditional plot line on top of those topics (boy meets girl, type of thing -- I think the plot line in this case was let's get rid of don't ask don't tell and make gay marriage legal, but I'm bored by this guy already). In reality, of course, "retired military" is being kind. Try: unemployed construction worker who stole his wife's identity to use it online.
This guy was outed (cue rim shot, er, maybe not the _best_ choice of metaphors here, never mind) because of peripheral contact with the really big story:
"When news broke that Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American man, admitted to blogging as Amina Araff on the blog "A Gay Girl in Damascus", suspicions rose over Brooks' identity.
Apparently the two men posing as lesbians corresponded with each other - neither knowing the other's true identity, the Post reported."
I suppose I should say something about the Tom MacMaster incident and how it was exposed, but I am relatively certain that anything you might want to know you can find out by googling it (short form for people in the future who might have forgotten: white man from Georgia (in the Us) living in Scotland pretends to be an out-to-her-family lesbian in Damascus whose dad did heroic things like talk the guvmint into not arresting him or her or something like that and many, many other implausible things, culminating in MacMaster saying she was kidnapped because he wanted to go on vacation. His explanation of why he did this is incoherent and breathtaking and Edward Said's daughter has weighed in on the topic of Orientalism -- appropriately, in my irrelevant opinion). Again: very high concept failed movie idea.
In _Popular Crime_, Bill James describes a variety of famous historical crimes and speculates about what might _actually_ have happened and then rallies evidence in favor of his theories. Of course, at this distance and with completely inadequate evidence in many cases, it's hard to know the truth; I certainly found his stories compelling. In any event, one of the motifs that shows up repeatedly is the "person who inserts himself into the story" (to be fair, not always a man). James is highly suspicious of people who insert themselves into a crime story. And so am I. I think it's actually a great way to think in general about Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell.
James does _not_ think everyone who inserts themselves into a criminal investigation is a or the criminal. He goes to some length to describe in detail how common false confession is and the standard array of tactics used by police to confirm or disregard confession, and how those tactics can, on occasion, be undermined (police, after all, being humans and all). Also, a lot of the stories they tell are fantastically preposterous on the face of them. However, when police have nothing else to go on, and one of these people is _really_ convincing (good nonverbals NOT plausibility), trouble ensues.
I think some of the same elements are present here. There is _huge_ news going on in a part of the world that a lot of us have no personal connection to. But we _want_ a personal connection, and blogs are a way to get it. There are a _lot_ of people out there who wants to be the Center of Attention (mostly because they have really serious issues of their own or maybe are just unemployed and bored with looking at online porn, but never mind that now; these people have gotten too much attention already); lying in a way that puts them in the middle of this story is a natural fit.
The Washington Post did a nice summary of other online personas who turned out to be _really_ not true:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-gay-girl-in-damascus-displays-ease-of-fudging-authenticity-online/2011/06/13/AGxBWkTH_story.html
But honestly, this is exactly the same as the woman who claimed she ran around Europe being raised by wolves during WW2 and sold the book, the woman who claimed to be a white woman raised by a black family and to have all kinds of gang connections, Frey's exaggerations about the amount of time he spent in jail and so forth, etc. ad nauseum. With a little stretching, it's the same as a fake Vermeer that everyone believed in the 1920s that is so painfully obviously not even remotely Vermeer a few decades later that it is honestly hard to believe anyone fell for this. All these frauds work in the same way: get a stack of trendy topics, pick a number between 1 and 10, build a really dumb plot on top of it. If we _say_ it's fiction, it probably won't sell very well (unless it's Avatar), because the story is for crap and it is top heavy. But if we _say_ it's real, then it falls under the heading of "you couldn't make this stuff up", and as long as there's enough detail, a lot of people will cope with the obvious Wrongness and make excuses for you and blah, blah, bleeping blah.
Bloggers don't generally tell you their sexual orientation as part of the argument for an unrelated cause. Bloggers do not claim to have some 1 in 10,000 or even more unlikely event occur to them -- every month or two (a bunch of blogs get started and run for years off of an ordinary person trying to deal with the fallout of a _single_ rare event happening to them. Once.). Bloggers do not front-and-center a disability AND an unrelated cause. People who are genuinely marginalized because of their gender, orientation, ableness, etc. do _not_ draw attention to these attributes as a way of increasing the validity of an unrelated argument. Seriously. That's the _opposite_ of true. (Can you even _imagine_ me saying "I'm poly, therefore you should trust my opinion on economic policy"? How about, "My kid has autism and I probably have Asperger's, therefore you should be extra special interested in anything I have to say about the housing market"? Even better, "I was a dot commer, so my parenting advice must be true". I particularly like this one: "I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, therefore my urban fantasy book reviews should be taken more seriously." Not in a million years.)
There are straight, white, even male people out there who can gin up envy for people who are queer, brown, female, etc. and then exploit those attributes for their own gain. We know who two of them are now. That's probably an indication that there are more. Keep an eye out for them and Don't Be a Mark.
Finally, if you read the "full interview" with Graber, it's pretty clear that this guy can't keep even "the truth" straight. He claims he started the website because he has a lot of gay friends, but then says he doesn't hang out with gay people. It may make sense in his head, but it sure doesn't make sense written down.
I also use non-verbals, but too many people believe the crap they spew.
It turns out that I _hugely enjoy_ lies being exposed and the chaos and disarray that occurs among those that believed the lie. I'm fairly certain this makes me a bad person (or at least worse than I would be without this characteristic), but I do try to be honest about my basic feelings. "Switch it off" should only be used very occasionally.
The last couple of days have been Fabulous for Exposing Untruth.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/retired-military-man-posing-as-lesbian-on-blog-pretended-to-be-deaf-widowed-with-twins/story-e6frf7jx-1226075461315
Also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/bill-grabers-full-interview-im-not-gay-but-i-want-gay-people-to-be-equal/2011/06/14/AGNLlpUH_blog.html
You can see the lie in the headline: retired military man posing as deaf, lesbian, widowed mother of twins. Really? Really? Anyone believed this? It's like a _failed_ high concept movie idea: you get a stack of index cards with trendy topics, shuffle it, pick a number between 1 and 10, select that number of cards, and build some very silly and traditional plot line on top of those topics (boy meets girl, type of thing -- I think the plot line in this case was let's get rid of don't ask don't tell and make gay marriage legal, but I'm bored by this guy already). In reality, of course, "retired military" is being kind. Try: unemployed construction worker who stole his wife's identity to use it online.
This guy was outed (cue rim shot, er, maybe not the _best_ choice of metaphors here, never mind) because of peripheral contact with the really big story:
"When news broke that Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American man, admitted to blogging as Amina Araff on the blog "A Gay Girl in Damascus", suspicions rose over Brooks' identity.
Apparently the two men posing as lesbians corresponded with each other - neither knowing the other's true identity, the Post reported."
I suppose I should say something about the Tom MacMaster incident and how it was exposed, but I am relatively certain that anything you might want to know you can find out by googling it (short form for people in the future who might have forgotten: white man from Georgia (in the Us) living in Scotland pretends to be an out-to-her-family lesbian in Damascus whose dad did heroic things like talk the guvmint into not arresting him or her or something like that and many, many other implausible things, culminating in MacMaster saying she was kidnapped because he wanted to go on vacation. His explanation of why he did this is incoherent and breathtaking and Edward Said's daughter has weighed in on the topic of Orientalism -- appropriately, in my irrelevant opinion). Again: very high concept failed movie idea.
In _Popular Crime_, Bill James describes a variety of famous historical crimes and speculates about what might _actually_ have happened and then rallies evidence in favor of his theories. Of course, at this distance and with completely inadequate evidence in many cases, it's hard to know the truth; I certainly found his stories compelling. In any event, one of the motifs that shows up repeatedly is the "person who inserts himself into the story" (to be fair, not always a man). James is highly suspicious of people who insert themselves into a crime story. And so am I. I think it's actually a great way to think in general about Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell.
James does _not_ think everyone who inserts themselves into a criminal investigation is a or the criminal. He goes to some length to describe in detail how common false confession is and the standard array of tactics used by police to confirm or disregard confession, and how those tactics can, on occasion, be undermined (police, after all, being humans and all). Also, a lot of the stories they tell are fantastically preposterous on the face of them. However, when police have nothing else to go on, and one of these people is _really_ convincing (good nonverbals NOT plausibility), trouble ensues.
I think some of the same elements are present here. There is _huge_ news going on in a part of the world that a lot of us have no personal connection to. But we _want_ a personal connection, and blogs are a way to get it. There are a _lot_ of people out there who wants to be the Center of Attention (mostly because they have really serious issues of their own or maybe are just unemployed and bored with looking at online porn, but never mind that now; these people have gotten too much attention already); lying in a way that puts them in the middle of this story is a natural fit.
The Washington Post did a nice summary of other online personas who turned out to be _really_ not true:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-gay-girl-in-damascus-displays-ease-of-fudging-authenticity-online/2011/06/13/AGxBWkTH_story.html
But honestly, this is exactly the same as the woman who claimed she ran around Europe being raised by wolves during WW2 and sold the book, the woman who claimed to be a white woman raised by a black family and to have all kinds of gang connections, Frey's exaggerations about the amount of time he spent in jail and so forth, etc. ad nauseum. With a little stretching, it's the same as a fake Vermeer that everyone believed in the 1920s that is so painfully obviously not even remotely Vermeer a few decades later that it is honestly hard to believe anyone fell for this. All these frauds work in the same way: get a stack of trendy topics, pick a number between 1 and 10, build a really dumb plot on top of it. If we _say_ it's fiction, it probably won't sell very well (unless it's Avatar), because the story is for crap and it is top heavy. But if we _say_ it's real, then it falls under the heading of "you couldn't make this stuff up", and as long as there's enough detail, a lot of people will cope with the obvious Wrongness and make excuses for you and blah, blah, bleeping blah.
Bloggers don't generally tell you their sexual orientation as part of the argument for an unrelated cause. Bloggers do not claim to have some 1 in 10,000 or even more unlikely event occur to them -- every month or two (a bunch of blogs get started and run for years off of an ordinary person trying to deal with the fallout of a _single_ rare event happening to them. Once.). Bloggers do not front-and-center a disability AND an unrelated cause. People who are genuinely marginalized because of their gender, orientation, ableness, etc. do _not_ draw attention to these attributes as a way of increasing the validity of an unrelated argument. Seriously. That's the _opposite_ of true. (Can you even _imagine_ me saying "I'm poly, therefore you should trust my opinion on economic policy"? How about, "My kid has autism and I probably have Asperger's, therefore you should be extra special interested in anything I have to say about the housing market"? Even better, "I was a dot commer, so my parenting advice must be true". I particularly like this one: "I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, therefore my urban fantasy book reviews should be taken more seriously." Not in a million years.)
There are straight, white, even male people out there who can gin up envy for people who are queer, brown, female, etc. and then exploit those attributes for their own gain. We know who two of them are now. That's probably an indication that there are more. Keep an eye out for them and Don't Be a Mark.
Finally, if you read the "full interview" with Graber, it's pretty clear that this guy can't keep even "the truth" straight. He claims he started the website because he has a lot of gay friends, but then says he doesn't hang out with gay people. It may make sense in his head, but it sure doesn't make sense written down.