Where is the Hype?, page 2

Originally posted by SpittinTruth
Well, look at all the doom and gloom threads, where NOTHING has happened. Look at the disasters that occurred, and the after-effects never came to fruition; ie...Japan, Deep Water Horizon, Bird Flu, the Next Great Depression, etc, etc... People went back to sleep; which could be a very dangerous thing to do. Like someone just posted...the boy has cried wolf....one too many times. Scary part is....the wolf actually showed up...when least expected. I'm keeping my ears and eyes on alert. No time to sleep or get caught off guard!

You missed the point of the story. The point is that if you keep saying something that isn't true, people will stop listening to you. We, and by we I mean skeptical debunkers such as myself, knew Elenin was nonsense, yet no one listened. We also knew 2005 YU55 was not a threat to hit the earth or the moon in November. Again, no one listened. We knew Nibiru was a bunch of hogwash and nothing would show up and collide with/tilt/wreck our planet, and still no one listens. They only realize the truth after their doom fails to materialize. They refuse to understand that it's possible to know these things are nonsense ahead of time. Instead they keep touting nonsense and eventually the general public becomes disillusioned with it.

I think the hype has died down this year because even some of the "2012 planet x/nibiru" believers are starting to gradually realize that if "Nibiru" were real, we'd have all seen it by now and that 12/21/12 will come and go uneventfully. If they had something tangible to latch onto, even if it was utter nonsense in reality, the story might be different. As it stands no one has given them that. For example, if comet Elenin had come a year later than it did I think we'd be seeing exactly what the OP was expecting, with people talking about it nonstop and becoming more and more hysterical every day. Instead, people heard the wolf cry on Elenin and learned afterwards that it was nonsense. The story of the big bad wolf is a warning to little boys who cry wolf, not to the village people for not listening every time the little boy wants to spout nonsense. The moral of the story is not that the village people need to keep listening to people who are perpetually full of it, the moral is to be honest in the first place.

If you really want to learn the right lesson from that story, then you need to start critically examining claims of "doom" and not just support or repeat it because you're scared that this time it might "really be" the wolf. I say this not just to you Spittin, but to everyone who has an interest in these subjects. If you want to do the right thing, then learn how to critically examine these claims and be ready and willing to debunk them if they're nonsense. So far that's all they are, nonsense.

If one day a claim comes up that actually has merit, the people who were telling the truth all along about all the nonsense that preceeded it will be the ones that normal people listen to, not the doom mongers who spewed nonsense a hundred times before. In reality, those are the people who know how to tell fact from fiction. We don't just disregard claims simply because they're being made, we disregard them because they're wrong. If one ends up ever being right, we'll be speaking up about it and that's when normal folks will really start to perk up.

Just imagine for a moment that someone like Phage suddenly came on here one day and announced that a killer comet had been discovered that was likely on a course for impact. Once people got over the initial shock of thinking that maybe he's playing a joke, people would listen and word would spread like wildfire. That's because Phage has real credibility, you know he doesn't cry wolf and if he were to say something like that, there'd be real cause for alarm. Oh sure, a few of the most rabid wolf criers might ignore him out of personal reasons and simply because they're so out of it that they automatically think whatever he says is a lie, but that's beside the point. The point is, the wolf criers are not the only ones who can sound an alarm, and when the day comes that there's a real need to sound an alarm, they're not the ones people will listen to, but there are lots of people out there who can and will sound it on their own. The ones who aren't known for crying wolf will be the ones people turn to.

edit on 22-6-2012 by ngchunter because: (no reason given)