Can We Continue to Blame Hoaxers for Our Willingness to Believe?
Fool me once, and I’ll hold you accountable; fool me several times, and I’ll free myself of all guilt. Consider this: how much compassion can the little block-head in the zigzag shirt expect when Lucy takes the football out from beneath Charlie Brown for the 900th time?
Unfortunately, the answer would be a lot for some. “In a secular era, a true miracle must appear to be a fabrication in order to get recognition in the world,” English author Angela Carter once sarcastically noted. She is completely correct; the truth is a lie, and all lies are true.
Cryptozoology, paranormal inquiry, ufology, and other fringe areas have long been closely linked to a hoaxing culture. Someone has been hoaxing evidence of their existence for as long as man has made these claims, either to bolster their belief system, get attention, or just to get a giggle out of duping the believers. I believe that Ug sat in his cave grunting out what he had seen floating in the sky a long time ago, and that one of his colleagues cave-painted hoaxed “proof” not long after.
We shouldn’t be so quick to believe and attach our emotions to something we know will be yanked out from under us, just like Charlie Brown. We should proceed with caution while approaching Lucy. Nonetheless, I often come across cases when people are outraged that a film, picture, or piece of tangible evidence has been tampered with or faked. These people react with a fury that is only equaled by the magnitude of their emotional engagement. You have no right to deceive me.
If it were up to people like Matt Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, there would be laws prohibiting it—at least the large ones that manage to attract TV crews and get up on his television. As I previously said, recent frauds such as Balloon Boy and the dead Bigfoot specimen in Georgia disturbed him much.
But can he truly blame his propensity to believe on someone else? He would have had the dispassion to move with caution and await all of the facts if he hadn’t been emotionally attached to the notion that we would finally have proof.
There are no laws that are required. In the making of Balloon Boy, certain very real laws were breached, and they were rectified. A “Chicken Little Law” is unnecessary. If we required one, it would have been passed more than a century ago, during the height of the newspaper wars and the Yellow Journalism epidemic.
We just need to maintain our wits about us and keep our passions in control. We must be guided by strong reasoning and scepticism rather than a readiness to believe. It’s OK for us to take a stand, to believe, but we must not be blinded by our need to believe. If Charlie Brown gives her the opportunity, Lucy will continue to tug the football out from under him.
