As I've grown up and matured (matoored "wink"), there is one thing that constantly gets in my craw for its sheer devilishness. That thing: the runaway factoid.
What is the runaway factoid, you ask? Think of it like this: you hear that Chuck Norris is in town. You go to the place where Chuck Norris is reported to be, and there you see this guy roughly the size of Chuck Norris with blonde hair and Norris beard wiz by in fast moving car. You saw Chuck Norris! Woah!
But, then again, you didn't really see Chuck Norris. I mean, the car was moving pretty fast. But you saw a guy fitting that description roughly, blurry as it may be, in a car that may or may not have been a limo...but you know, you were paying attention as much as possible to Chuck, so it might have been a black lincoln town car too.
Then, you're watching Fox News (why you're doing this, I'm not at all sure), and you see a taped interview from earlier that day with Chuck Norris in their studios on the other side of the country...time stamped at the exact time you saw Chuck in your town wizzing by you. Wait....what gives?
You, my friend, have been had by the runaway factoid.
In fact, some douche on the other side of the country is trying to hype of the new home gym system fronted by Chuck by sending Chuck lookalikes all over the country out to make "appearances" just like the one you saw, stirring up a frenzy about him. Where's that Chuck asswhoopin when you need it?!
This, unfortunately, has become the bane of my existence. I'm interested in a myriad of topics on this or that, be it art or self-improvement or politics, whatever. And there is one thing that is certain of virtually every topic imaginable: there is someone out there that hates it with a fervent passion. Add to that already combustible element a dash of wackjob, and you've got trouble brewing. Add to this recipe of disaster a nice dose of skilled competency, and you've got the perfect storm for a bookload of runaway factoids about a given topic.
If you like Jon Bon Jovi (and I don't know why you wouldn't, unless you know, you're not gay), then you can rest assured that somewhere someone will be pushing the theory that he eats little children. If you want to know more about chemistry, you'll undoubtedly find a group of people somewhere pushing the idea that chemistry has long since actually achieved the ability to turn regular items into gold but is withholding this knowledge. If you want to know more about Catholicism, be prepared to find a bunch of people claiming that the early Popes all were secretly polytheistic worshipers of Zeus.
Now, these claims by themselves aren't so bad. In fact, they're kind of fun. But then enters the runaway factoid and fucks everything up. Not only does Jon Bon Jovi eat little children, we have obtained a written statement (
posted on this site) from hotel workers that have seen Bon Jovi eat little children as well as police reports that have described an incident that happened at the hotel around the time. We have travel logs kept by the Papal assistants (
posted here) that show many of the early Popes traveling to different parts of Rome at the exact same time that remnants of polytheistic Zeus worshippers were holding grand ceremonies. And on and on.
And these factoids look quite convincing. And they start to make sense in a perverse way. "Why, Bon Jovi did have that long hair. Perhaps he was hiding little children under there for a snack later. "
But still, these runaway factoids are the stuff of pure conspiracy theory fun. "We have tape of Obama grandmother making him swear allegiance to the Koran in Kenya where he was born." "We have audiotape of Neil Armstrong saying the stagelights need to be reset on the Apollo Moonlanding." "We have exclusive legal documents that show that George Bush made a call to towers in New York on September 11th 30 minutes before they were blown up!" And on and on and on.
The birthers are pure fun. The truthers are pure fun. Moon landing denialists are pure fun. Alien autopsy people are endlessly entertaining. In fact, just reading the comments section of any given conspiracy theory site can keep me monumentally entertained for hours on end.
The problem for me arises around serious issues. I mean, nobody really gives a rats ass about the truthers or moon landing denialists. But then there are some serious topics of science and journalism and just basic stuff I want to know where the runaway factoid still makes itself known and is hard to get a handle on. The reason it's so annoying to me is that because I'm not versed in a lot of disciplines in depth, I have to rely on what I read from what I consider the most reliable sources. And then, out of the blue, someone makes a very concise coherent argument backed by some very real looking documents and or plausible holes in a theory. I don't have time to check and see it's true or not. I'm just left with this gaping hole of confusion.
If I did have time, half of such gaping hole stuff I find, I would quickly realize with a search or two was created out of thin air or "discovered" by an attorney that also is the local game warden at wildlife center in the middler of Arkansas after he dropped a lot of acid one night. But I don't have time. And worse, even if I did, I believe the number of these runaway factoid are ever increasing.
And herein lies the meat of the problem. In a world where power is derived from accepted belief, and digital and legal evidence is all too often taken as conclusive gospel, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of these runaway factoids in the world, factoids that are just plausible enough to make you not sure of what to think. It can become mindnumbing. And the news media does a bad job with them because their resources are limited as well.
Certainly, the internet and billions upon billions of user created content has led to and increase in factoids, but I also think there was this anti-mainstream media thing that started to produce "evidence" that, dealt with professionally could easily be dismissed, but to the casual observer, was hard to parse. And so factoids became self referenced and shared between a certain segment of the "anti-establishment" looking to promote whatever cause they were promoting. Accompanied by a great deal of dumbasses claiming that the "truth" was being hidden by the mainstream media and that the stupid masses were being misled, after a while, there were just so many "factoids" out there, often highly funded and with incredibly professional looking documentation, that it became impossible to check even a small amount of them.
And I worry about that in the future. I can't tell you how many times some douchenozzle has shown me bogus statistics about some contentious topic that seemed completely plausible, only to find out later that it was well-crafted conspiracy theory with numbers straight out of thin air, put together by some other douchenozzle. And even worse, the douchenozzles all too often reference each other as "experts" on such issues, usually citing some other douchenozzles along the way they cavort around with on the internet causing mischief.
A few authors have written to some extent about this phenomenon. The argument goes something like this: in a world where factoids can be generated by hyperagendad groups at an unbelievable rate that become harder and harder to factcheck, what will continue to emerge is a world of knowledge that confirms your preconceived notions, regardless of what your preconceived notions are. And there will be a world of knowledge that confirms the preconceived exact opposite notions of your jackoff neighbor that keeps letting his dog poo in your yard. Both of you, mortal enemies, will be completely correct no matter what you think.
Believe the world is flat? There will be literally tons of people with tons of clear hard to refute evidence that also believe the world is flat for you to hook up with. Believe that babies really come from the babymaker god
Ulah Ulah? I've heard there is a growing body of research that is becoming harder and harder to ignore on that fact. In fact, remember that mainstream media fucker Copernicus that said that it was the sun that was the center of our solar system? I have documents
here that show he forged all his data. In fact, we are all revolving around a planet that can't be seen because of a strange light effect caused by its interactiion with the sun.
But maybe such a world will be better any way. For when I can irrefutably prove any damn thing I want, I will finally know for absolute certain that indeed all women really do want my dick.
or would you prefer 
