It's not incredulity that's the problem

When I was a kid I knew a guy who would fight you if you said professional wrestling was fake.

While most of us figured out that Bobby Shane and Haystacks Calhoun were more performers than competitors about the time we started to wonder how Santa Claus could accomplish all that in a single night, he insisted that every body slam was prosecuted with lethal intent. Every vendetta was genuine; every snarling word delivered at ringside was meant. And if you let him know you didn't believe, he'd demonstrate his version of the Tongan death grip on you.

We didn't get his credulity--an entertainment product's authenticity was not something we factored into how we received our kicks. Pro wrest-ling was spectacle, more enjoyable for being populated by outlandish caricatures with world-wrecking ambitions. But we recognized that the squared circle was an alternative universe that didn't impinge on the wider, realer world. We didn't expect to see Killer Kowalski or Gorilla Monsoon in the grocery store. They lived in our TVs.

You grow up a bit, and your horizons broaden. Maybe you reassess the received wisdom handed down by your parents; maybe you start to understand that well-intentioned people can be wrong. You start to realize that some people believe wacky things, and that other people will tell you wacky things that they don't believe in an effort to manipulate you. You start to realize you can't trust everything you hear or read.

And you begin to understand that there are a lot of people out there like the guy who believed pro wrestling was real.

One of the real problems we face these days is that people have trouble determining what's a credible source of information and what's professional wrestling.

Mostly people have always attended to those voices that tell them what they want to hear, that give them permission to be greedy and think of themselves as examples of the best kind of people. One way to get rich in this country is to tell people they've been cheated and discriminated against, and that certain covert forces are arrayed against them. It seems like everybody aches to believe that they are persecuted--it saves them the pain of considering that maybe their situation could be explained by factors like work ethic or meager talent.

We believe what we want. Newt Gingrich says feelings are more important than facts anyway. Still, I'm sometimes surprised at how gullible some people are.

I think most of us know pro wrestling is scripted entertainment presented as blood sport. So why do we seem to have such trouble identifying so-called "fake news?"

Maybe the very dull used to put their faith in supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer (which admittedly has confused the issue by occasionally committing real journalism) and the Weekly World News, but it hardly seemed like a problem. And while there are always a few who are taken in by a column in this newspaper that is purportedly written by a dead cat (which you'd think would be a tip-off), I've never felt that it was a critical issue.

Full disclosure: A newspaper I once worked for used to invest a lot of time and energy in an annual hoax designed to send dozens if not hundreds of uncritical readers on a fool's errand. One year it reported a gold strike beneath a local mall and printed instructions on how ordinary citizens could stake their claim by showing up at the mall with a special armband we'd helpfully provided. It did not amuse those who had to deal with the 400 angry and disappointed people who showed up wearing armbands.

I also once--many years ago--helped concoct and spread a rumor that a certain vainglorious politician, by no means a national figure, was being considered to replace Bowie Kuhn as the commissioner of Major League Baseball. When a reporter from a rival newspaper actually asked the politician about this rumor at a press conference--and the politician didn't quite deny it--we were appropriately horrified (and secretly gratified) that our inside joke had actually done the early-'80s equivalent of "going viral."

So understand I'm not coming to you as one of the mandarins of serious journalism wanting to shame you for having fun on social media. I think you ought to be skeptical, even of things you read in this newspaper, where we make every effort not to trick you. I don't think it hurts to be occasionally reminded that we can all be had, that we don't always know what we think we know.

But fake news sites aren't the real problem; despite the surveys that argue otherwise, most of us are perfectly capable of telling fake news from real news. Most of the people spreading stories about #pizzagate probably understand that they're propagating a hoax. They're spreading the stories because that's how we argue these days, with hyperbole and allegations of child sex trafficking. Because it's not enough to disagree with folks; we have to demonize them. It's not enough to defeat our political rivals; we have to lock them up.

What worries me is not so much the possibility that we've become more stupid. What worries me is the possibility that we've become so nihilistic that we ignore every inconvenient truth and embrace every lurid lie that supports our wishful agenda. Sure, a few blighted souls probably don't know any better, but most of us are perfectly capable of determining whether a story is credible or not. We've just gotten mean and lazy.

And you know that kid who thought wrestling was real? I don't think he really believed. I just think he kind of got off on putting people into headlocks.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

www.blooddirtangels.com

Editorial on 12/04/2016

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