Social Media

Web squared

We live in some interesting times. The heart of social mediasphere – facebook, digg, twitter, del.icio.us, and many others, cause a buzz of exhilaration and certainly, many more ways for enterprising entrepreneurs to profit. Ideas circulate as fast as scandals. Potential consumers are sniffing around for deals and partners. Although free and most of them painfully primitive, blogs have power.

Online status
As traditional news media collectors continue to disappear and Internet becomes the prime channel through which the technologically advanced world searches for news, information, and opinions, entrepreneurs are planning how organizations should build their status online and how well equipped they are to make a digital impact on other companies. And the public. Chief executive officers are delivering digital invitations for Digital Impact Conferences led by digital thought leaders who teach businesses how to build online communications, to assess risks, and to ensure their future in the kingdom of digital communications. Some others are teaching how to sell social media to CEOs. While some of us are bravely marching into a world of Twitter, Wikis, RSS, and other current life advances, some are still being skeptics, and some, technologically challenged, are still living with old types of flip phones as an old, but good way of communication.
Figure shows "Meme map" of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at O'Reilly Media. It's very much a work in progress, but shows the many ideas that radiate out from the Web 2.0 core.

Intentions
Social media is progressively influencing more and more public opinions and dramatically changing families' and other relationships' dynamics. Some people are adapting to the changes, benefiting from different ways of increasing sales, gaining popularity, learning, or simply finding new ways to waste time on pointless conversations. There seems to be too many things covered under the buzz term ‘Social’ and that may be causing confusion and diminishing the real, positive Social Media intentions, and holding up progress. We may be stuck with wrong perception until the word splits and changes into several, more specific terms.

Twittering for ego
To add to the Social mix, just recently, huge media attention was given to Ashton Kutcher and his competition with CNN for Twitters. The immense publicity given to this event was considered overwhelming and irritating by some and it raises questions about today's social values. Ashton told Larry King that he initially used Twitter to feed his ego until he realized that he can use the service to make a difference. He had challenged CNN to the Twitter race, saying he would donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day in late April if he beat CNN, and 1,000 if he lost. CNN agreed to do the same. Cherwenka, the Huffington Post blogger, believes that "Kutcher may be one of the first people to leverage the power of online social networking for widespread social good". The question is if this hype will turn into a new fashion or will irritate and disgust the existing and the potential Twitters.

Conclusion
Not only Ashton, Twitters, and Apple are investing. Companies have shifted a center of the marketing into the Web, some are still dwelling on Social Media side effects, but if we think that Web 2.0 is transforming the way people work, learn, and play, let's participate…

Realizations:
1. Digital media is a future
2. "Social Media" term gives the wrong perception
3. Before you participate, determine the goal

Links:

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFbDEBNS7AE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cZDYz1hmi0&feature=related
http://odeo.com/episodes/23081457-Millenial-Makeover-by-Morley-Winograd-and-Michael-D-Hais
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/Networked-Families.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhjS-MiTIc

http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=shirky&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=whmaSZatKJqWsAOyk91y&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

Plugged In

Controversy
While the use of digital articulation in education is flourishing, advocating for advancements in Digital Media education, many educators and psychologists argue that parents need to ensure that their teenagers break free of compulsive engagement with screens and spend time in the physical company of human beings.

Positive side
Studies show that young people live media-saturated lives, spending an average of nearly 6 1/2 hours a day with media. Those with more access to media spend more time using it. On the positive side, parents always know where their children are, children develop their intellectual abilities because every additional experience is intelligence, children stay in touch with their friends and listen to the music, even while overloaded with work or ill and unable to leave their houses. This new ‘Multitasking Generation’ tends to be extraordinarily good in finding and manipulating information.

Negative side
On the negative side, an overuse of new technologies takes children and adults away from the other activities such as sports, family life, and reading books. Students at Duke report that they don't read whole book anymore. The multitasking starts in the very morning when children brush their teeth and decide what to wear. The IM is being sent with the question and while still waiting for an answer, the question is being sent as a text message, as well. The conversation continues as: "Oh my gosh, I would have to wear the same shoes again". Notebooks or cell phones often communicate insignificant messages as " suuuuup" (What's up"). Parents are concerned that their kids' compulsive screen time is affecting their school work and the family life. Everyone in the family has his own world, family dinners are rare, and they don't have time for a social life. Some universities encourage students to find quiet spots on campus to just think with cell phone off and laptops zipped up in their cases.

Multitasking
Researchers already have some strong opinions on multitasking. The mind habit of dividing one's attention into many small slices has significant implications for the way young people learn, reason, socialize, do creative work, and understand the world. Research and common sense point out that depth of thought deteriorates as one attends more tasks. Media multitasking, according to many, has squeezed out the significance of facial expression and body language replacing it with quick e-messages. In the end, fast pace and constant multitasking may condition a person’s brain to an overexcited state, making it difficult to focus even when we want to.

Conclusion
It seems that the emphasis on hard work is part of the American culture and multitasking is simply a consequence of this attitude or way of life. When we are busy, we naturally choose easy and quick ways to communicate thoughts, to search data, and to simply stay in touch with people we care about. The life pace seems to be too much faster than before and to drive to meet someone and walk with them in order to have long, although pleasant conversations, seems as an impossible task. Even vacations are too much shorter in comparison with, for example, vacations in European countries. One or two weeks signalize that there we have no much time to "waste" and that we need to go back to the work routine.

In this warp speed era of Web-enabled computers, when it has become a practice to conduct several IM conversations, watch "The Office", google, and text at the same time, the important task for parents is to control the amount of time their kids are plugged- in and the quality of plugged- in time. If the "suuuuup" chat is too long, that is an overuse. If it cannot be controlled, then it's an addiction.

Realizations:
1. The multitasking kids may be better prepared for today's frantic workplace.
2. I don't feel disconnected although plugged in.
3. We are fortunate to have the option to be connected.
4. Unplugged, unTwittered, and unFacebooked life is still worth living

Consumer Psychology

Whether it is in music, television, radio, movies, or print there will always be restrictions on what artists are allowed to show to the world. Not only has it affected everyone, but also brings up the question of whether the right things are being censored.

In wartime, explicit censorship is carried out with the intent of preventing the release of information that might be useful to an enemy.
US Senator Hiram Johnson said during World War I: “The first casualty when war comes, is truth.”

Changing the content of textbooks is often an issue of debates. The term "whitewashing " is used for removal of critical or damaging information from textbooks. The examples are Vietnam War, military atrocities in history, The Holocaust, or Bombing in Dresden. Deleting or denying history does not seem to be beneficial for anyone. Deleting the full details of war tortures and violence can be justified by intention of escaping traumatic negative impact on unprepared, undeveloped children's minds. Still, an understanding of the tremendous suffering should be emphasized and people’s misery not trivialized.

Scientific studies may also reach the public drastically changed in content and in meaning. A medication may be shown in a published study as beneficial, while the study fails to mention its harmful side effects. Some scientists reported pressure from the government to change their statements with regard to climate change. In these examples, changing information or failing to deliver it in full may be damaging for people and have serious and unforeseen consequences.

Censorship has a daily impact on our present day society, the news articles, television shows, radio broadcasts, and all other media formats. There are opinions and facts that support both sides of the gatekeeping controversy. Authors purposely create their work to express themselves and their opinions. As a consequence of censorship, the public is not able to receive the intended message. When altered, the message may have a different meaning.

The question is whether or not it can be clearly defined what should and what should not be allowed to be presented to the entire world in large. Also, it is questionable whether everything that is quelled due to its opposition to our own views, should be censored, and if young people should be aware of the acceptable things only. Young people and everyone else should read good and bad literature to be able to distinguish between the two and to build his or her own judgment in the respect of value. Everyone should also have the opportunity to be well informed. It is only a question of the extent and the grotesqueness of the information that should reach them. Some people believe that restricting a child's ability to reach their full intellectual potential is not worth the small chance that the music industry, media, and books can possibly have an affect on a child's personality, attitude, or behavior. It is evident that through schools, churches, the media, parents, the music industry, and other caregivers have the power to control what the youth of America is exposed to. This does not mean that it is always in the best interest of the child or a young teenager to be protected.
Still, bad literature can make a different impact on people than severely violent and a hard core movies which are understood by the very young audience as violent and may have traumatic effects on young brains.

Gatekeeping in news is more complex; it involves decisions about the amount of time and space given to a news event as well as where the story is placed. News filtering might be called news judgment. One of the important characteristics of journalism is its gatekeeping function. News gatekeepers are academically trained and have the professional experience required to recognize a news story and to see that it gets into print or on the screen. The gatekeepers reject a fairly large number of news stories because, in their judgment, they can be (among other things) not newsworthy or lacking in relevance to a particular audience.

Before publishing, media makers must have some limits, something that would not be published or seen in any media format that their child should not read about or see. This should be within the bounds of good taste. Although a definition of good taste varies, most people appear to have some intuitive sense of what a good taste is and what is not. And, that should be good for a start.

Movie Censorship is strictly the review by an authority of any material before publication or dissemination, with the legal right to prevent, alter, or delay its appearance. The Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA) is now 40-years old. Jack Valenti invented it with the prime purpose of ratings to give parents information about movies. CARA reports that they only "reflect standards and not set standards". The change in ratings reflect how society has changed and the standards it accepts. The rating system is frequently accused that NC-17 gives far more N-17 for violence than for sex. The raters argue that violence NC-17s edit shortly after being muzzled and then get the top end of an R. Sex NC-17 s go to the press immediately before being edited because they love publicity.
By CARA, they would want someone famous, like Steven Spielberg, to go out and make NC-17, because that would, in their opinion, help rating system. That, by them, never happens.
Some people feel treated unfairly when the outcome does not fit their expectations. Kirby Dick, the author of This Film Is Not Yet Rated, fights for his point of view after his movie was rated as an NC-17. The entire investigation of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), presented by and accentuated by Dick on behalf of independent (indi) filmmakers, seems exaggerated, presenting not only the organization and the system, but the individual raters as well in a negative light. According to Dick, the raters and the rating system are to be blamed for smacking the movies with an NC-17, discriminate, and don’t let people to see who they really are. Some do see Dicks’ documentary as entertaining and its scenes as well as the scenes in The Cooler, which was classified as an NC-17, as gentle reality. The NC-17 rating is based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse, or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children. The scene in “Bruno” offers the proof for the need for a rating system. It seems then that the system really works.

Photo Retouching is also one of the examples of gatekeeping. Photoshop effect impacts viewer mostly in a positive way. It’s nice to see beautiful faces and bodies and their perfection motivates others to work on their own looks. There are certainly some negative effects of displaying perfect looks in media. This perfection may impact our own self esteems; it may make us feel inadequate, hopeless and unaccomplished. Still, all these negative effects don’t’ appear to be too harsh.
On the other hand, the repercussions of NC-17 movie scenes can be disastrous. The children don’t need to see how “the world and people (some people) in it really are”. There are many different worlds and I believe that a majority of parents don’t want to introduce their children to the way of life that “Dick like” people want to present as “standards”. Children are not ready for the hard sex scenes. The sex scenes in “This Film is Not Rated Yet” are nothing less violent for the young minds than any brutal physical violence.
“Bruno” and other NC-17 rated movies hurt everybody, not only children. Movie rating, although not perfect, shields children from the offensive, traumatic, and premature learning. It also shields the public taste and prevents a social mess and decadence.

Should the internet be censored? It already is. The pop-ups can be blocked and if you try to open a no-no pages, you get punished with viruses that mess up your system so that you can hardly get rid of the entire mess. Pop-up blockers and viruses are your internet gatekeepers. What pornography really is can be endlessly debated. Child pornography should realert the need for censorship on the internet. ".. But if the porn industry finds no limits, it could perhaps reawaken the American taste for censorship. The very thought is anathema to most Americans. The danger is that it may be found more supportable than the worst conceivable outcome of the porno plague: a brutalizing of the American psyche that turns U.S. society into the world portrayed in A Clockwork Orange" (Time magazine, April o5, 1976).

Realizations:
Gatekeeping is unavoidable. It hasn't been clearly defined what should and what should not be allowed to be presented to the entire world. Gatekeeping, despite its imperfections is controlling public good taste and we all then share the gains and the losses.

Consumer Psychology

The debate about advertising is not new. The late Fred Allen cheered: "An advertising agency is 85% confusion and 15% commission." In 1931 F.D.R. surprisingly confessed: "If I were starting life over again, I would probably give first thought to making advertising my career . . . because it combines real imagination with a deep study of psychology” - Time Magazine

As advertising becomes more invasive, so does the discussion about it. Some advertisers count on facts, some believe that humor sells, and Clotaire Rapaille proudly yodels about the "clues". He has impressed the 100 companies that he has been working for, with the emotional and biological roots of our opinions and behaviors. Understanding the unconscious, according to Rapaille, gives us the tools to better inspire customers, design new products, and develop better communication strategies. Archetype Discovery is the unique method to reveal why a group of people behave the way they do towards a specific concept or product.

Rapaille's methods to persuade appear to be both creative and unique. He believes that each individual and group has a unique emotional code that identifies his memories from the past and in regard to the advertised product. For Rapaille, the cultural code is the unconscious meaning we attach to things due to our cultural experiences. Due to the different ways that we are raised, we process information different ways. The way Rapaille learned from the scientist Henri Laborit, there is no learning without emotion. The stronger the emotion, the better the learning. The combination of experience and an accompanied emotion was coined by Konrad Lorenz as an imprint. Invented by Lorenz and used by Rapaille, the imprint is something that makes us who we really are.

Triune brain theory describes three distinct brains: the cortex, limbic, and reptilian

Rapaille was asked to assist Nestlé to sell their instant coffee in Japan. However, tea was a part of Japanese culture in early 70s and it was hard to convince Japanese to switch from tea to coffee. Rapaille tried to identify the imprints, but imprints related with coffee were impossible to find. The imprints had to be created. Nestle created desserts for children soaked with the flavor of coffee, without the caffeine. Their first memory of coffee was a very positive one, and they carried it throughout their lives. Nestlé instant coffee was after all successfully introduced to the Japanese market.
The imprint of coffee on the Japanese market was significant for Rapaille to realize that memorable imprinting tremendously impacts what people do. It became apparent that imprints vary from culture to culture.

Rapaille at one point of his career tried to find the code for the Lego, the product of the Danish toy company. The instructions in the Lego boxes were carefully made, being colorful and very specific. American children were found not to care much about the instruction, but the German children were following directions, sorting the pieces by colors. The German code for their culture was "order". The code was being imprinted through the perfection of bureaucracy in German children early on to prevent the chaos thru generations. Fully colored instructions have ensured sales through generations.

"Suddenly, once you get the code, you understand everything. It's like getting new glasses." --Clotaire Rapaille

Advertisers are very often accused of manipulating people like puppets or animals, reducing the level of public taste and moral worth and making consumers behave to serve gluttonous commercial needs. Many of them amplify the importance of their own virtue to control customers, often making immodest claims that would be able to sell not only soap, but democracy or “American way of life”. (Thomas Babington Macaulay, Time Magazine).

Tasteless, harsh, loud, and disruptive advertisements may cause a huge public irritation. The court ruling is still pending, battling the force for the removal of the ads that are considered to be untruthful or misleading. Damaging or not for a collective psyche, but advertising will always live. Many of us do not mind being persuaded sometimes, given codes, or having the childhood candy brought back to our lives from our unconscious. The interesting news is that McDonald's might start brewing a real coffee (Bill Tancer, Time Magazine). Even if the persuaders could make the best use of words and pictures for Mc Donald's and find my relevant codes, I would still go to get my creamy latte at Borders. Bill Tancer believes that BigMac and latte just don't fit. I agree.

Realizations:
1. People (customers and advertisers) make choices based on emotion and reason
2. The Culture Code is a method developed by Clotaire Rapaille in an effort to bypass customers' emotional and logical levels of thinking to gain access to the reptilian level of our minds
3. Consumers are most of the time not aware that are being manipulated because they tend to be emotional about the advertised products or concepts

4. Some advertisers see customers as puppets, some of them as animals
5. All advertisers are customers
6. Advertisers and the companies they work for should have an ethical responsibility not to use knowledge of emotional reasoning to harm the customer even if it appears to make financial sense.

Links:

http://www.archetypediscoveriesworldwide.com/32.pdf

http://www.rapailleinstitute.com/

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/104/rapaille.html

http://www.slideshare.net/davidonoue/clotaire-rapaille

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain

http://www.slideshare.net/davidonoue/clotaire-rapaille

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1702277,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829287,00.html

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=51671

http://www.coolhunting.com/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/etc/script.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/etc/script.html

Bias in Wording

Prospect theory implies that the way options are framed dictates the way they will be received. The theory suggests that people's minds are more easily directed toward avoiding losses rather than securing gains.

I investigated the practical correctness of the theory by considering the following approaches to advertising the same kind of product. Here are the options that they were given:
Option 1. Look great in one week
Option 2. Stop losing money on food that makes you fat. We will help.
-----------------------------------
Option 1. 3 weeks weight loss program
Option 2. 3 more weeks without our weight loss program will be too dangerous for your health.

The following example comes from a Comcast advertising campaign:
Option 1. YOU GOTTA ACT BIG. Save more than 22% over the competition. Get Comcast Business Class Voice, Internet, and TV for just $ 99 per month.
---------------------------------------
Option 2. YOU GOTTA KNOW. You are loosing 22 % with your current provider.. Choose Comcast.

Result: The second option appeared much more attractive for all participants.

The important factors in choosing options and making decisions, similar to what the article "When Words Decide" suggests, would depend on people's likes and dislikes for the options, individual preferences, and an awareness of wording traps and biases.

What is bias? Although defined as a distortion of results or an unfair preference, it does not necessarily have to have that meaning or application. To create bias in news articles, it’s not necessary to misstate the facts; it is necessary only to establish a specific point of view as the default. News reporters may chose different frames for the same story. The difference between the writings is not necessarily intentional. The reader should identify the frame that is being used and chose the frame that fits.

Here is the example of the bias created in the news:

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: “You’ve said on the program Inside Washington that because of the portrayal of Kerry and Edwards as ‘ young and dynamic and optimistic,’ that that’s worth maybe 15 points."
”Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “Stupid thing to say. It was completely wrong. But I do think that, I do think that the mainstream press, I’m not talking about the blogs and Rush and all' that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don’t think it’s worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say."
Kurtz: “Is it worth five points?”
Thomas: “Maybe, maybe.”
— Exchange on CNN’s Reliable Sources, October 17, 2004.

A large number of choices in everyday life is teaching us to learn to resist and to feel good about our decisions. We must be skilled to detect bias as a one sided point of view. If the ones who report or sell bias are doing so to gain some advantage, do they care? They should, because they appear deceitful and that would reduce their creditability and relationship with the buyers in the future.

Evidently, words can be persuasive, and if replaced in the story, can give the story a completely different meaning. For instance, what does a word "free" means and how many meanings does it have?
Who benefits from changing words?Playing with words can help people, hurt people, make them laugh, motivate them, and make them make decisions.

Realizations:
1. Words are powerful
2. Everyone manipulates words in order to receive gains and that does not have to necessarily be a bad thing. For instance, in psychology, in work with clients, counselors lead clients toward finding their own decisions. Word traps are then justified by the goals that therapists intend to achieve. Choice of words and options is significant for decision making.
3.Prospect theory explains how people make choices in situations where they have to make decisions under risk.
4.We must evaluate options having in mind our goals and our past experiences.

Power of Music

This week, I have been asking myself the questions about music's power to persuade. I had never thought before about music as a media tool.

All types of media intend to attract viewers and music helps them to do so. News, TV series, or movies instruct us to listen because they intend to sell their beliefs, to ensure that they are entertaining, and to increase the number of viewers. In a majority of situations, I don't mind being persuaded. I want to feel, I want to believe that what I am seeing is true, because if it's not, I would not watch it. It is different with news. I am sometimes resistant and don't want to be hoaxed. Music can often be on the side of the news producers and I am trying to fight that sort of propaganda. In those instances, my reasoning is telling me that what I am watching may not be entirely true. Still, the music is on their side, not mine. I lose because they were brilliant in choosing the music that has a power to make me trust them, to make me feel the way they wish, perhaps even go so far as to allow me to form an opinion on whatever they are preaching. On the other hand, shows that pay on the cheaper side of production usually have no power to sell themselves, even with the help of music. There are usually some other cues that signal rubbish. Music cannot be blamed for everything.

As a young child, my music class in school required from us to listen to one classical music piece, to write one page about where the music took us, and which emotions it provoked within us. I remember that I used to make up the stories and it never crossed my mind that I could write about my real feelings and my thoughts. The task sounded like a burden at that time. Now, many years later, I have much better understanding of music's power and value in communication. I have learned that music is unselfishly stirring our emotions, the understanding of our unconscious, and the joy or sorrow with regard to what we learned about ourselves. Our relationship with music is most of the time unintentional. We are forced to feel and to meet with our unconsciousness and with the product of the realization.

My new stage in regard to music studies is one which consists of thinking about music as a tool for persuasion. This week, I have been thinking about the reasons for the specific music applications in advertisements, news, and movies.

Why do people sing "The Folgers in your cup" instead of just using words? Or, "Itsy Bitsy Tini Mini Yellow Polka Dot Bikini? Or Coca Cola? I can never forget that “Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”. The girl who owned it looked really great and we tended to think that we found a key. The song was just right; our family would unconsciously sing along to it in our house. If we had the Yoplait daily, three times a day, we might have also looked that great. The commercial included music and words. It was a happy combination of those two. Today's Yoplait commercial has a flowing, soothing music, that gives off the message that we must buy the yogurt in order to live in the same beautiful, worry-free world with the girl who is eating it on the screen. The singing message is much easier to remember and to persuade to believe and if the song is a parody, the message is not that offensive and listeners will not take it with resistance.

PBS offers that magical touch of music in their series for adults and children. Sesame Street and Barnie messages were mostly sung. The producers would utilize catchy tunes that people would repeatedly sing and eventually accept their message or lesson. Remember "Put down the Duckie,..., if you want to play a saxophone"? The song is repeated many times and it is very entertaining, educational, and persuasive. You are made to put down the Duckie (the old habits) in order to learn to play. The author of Sesame Street has written the music for the American Solgers In Iraq, as well. Music has power in both, the world of war and the world of Sesame Street.

Pleasant or disturbing images and music in media cannot be easily erased from our minds; we carry them to work, coffee breaks, supermarkets. That loud orchestra that accompanied the epic movie we saw, the melancholic D minor, the pathetic G minor, even the noble and frank C major have a sticking power that does not leave us easily. I continue to think about the magical, soft, breath capturing music that followed his enchanting sessions. I have realized that without music used in "The Illusionist" that would follow each of the illusionist's enchanting sessions. Can you imagine the “Slumdog Millionaire” without music? Watching Charlie Chaplin is fun. It seems that nothing is really missing. No words, music only and it is powerful and sufficient.

While I was walking thru the supermarket today, the images of the movie were not very clear in my mind, because I still must think of the news that I saw today, accompanied by grand B flat and B flat does oddest things. How did I relate with it and why? I will think about that tomorrow. I will now listen to Smetana and let my mind be free.



Realizations:
1. Music has a huge power to deliver information
2. Music evokes variations of feelings in different people
3. Evoked feelings vary in relation to someone's emotional state at the time of viewing
4. Impact of music depends of the art of reading other cues
5. Making diagrams to compare feelings with same video sequencing and different music or no music would be insightful (I have already started mine)
6. Music has a fascinating power to persuade
7.For me, this is the stage of an upgraded, critical approach to the music power.

One FOOT in the TRUTH

1CLICK AWAY!


Urban legends can be scary, dangerous, embarrassing, or harmless, and certainly misleading. Many of us can be duped. No wonder. The stories may sound like something between a joke and an urban legend, between a horror movie and a myth. If it's too real and too important, and we are the good souls, it is likely that we will re-tell, sending the ! message to at least 50 people on our e-mail list to warn them. Then, the story will be retold in many different ways.

You might have heard the story about the little old lady from the church. On a hot, summer day, on her way from the church, she stopped by to pick up the groceries, got into her car, and headed back home. As she entered her street, she noticed young vandals on the street corner. She quietly closed her window although it was 90 degrees and she had no air-conditioning. While she was still driving, she heard a loud explosion and something hit the back of her head. She touched this "something" which was wet and gooey, so she thought that she was touching a part of her brain. Believing that she had been shot, the lady turned her car around and rushed to the nearest hospital's emergency room. The doctors found a slowly leaking mass that the woman pointed out. After examination, they found that the leaking substance was a biscuit dough that exploded from the heat in the car.


This folktale has been retold for the last 4 years by the "little lady's" uncle, paramedics, Usenet posting, "Too Good To Be True" book, and as an e-mail message. Every posting had its own version, with a different ending. The uncle has been disseminating the story as it happened to "someone" from the church. If this story is not true, it could have happened.

This story and the others made me think and feel gullible because:

The story sounds true

It was told by someone about someone else, no reference or the reference is unclear

It has been retold



It has been changing while being re-told


All of the above can be characteristics of a true story. Be aware!

At snoopes.com and at ask.com you may find one that would match the one you are skeptical about. Ask.com will offer quizzes to test your myth IQs.
If you are duped and wanted to know if bald men are more viral, if artificial light is hazardous to your health, if chicken soup is good for a cold, if identical twins have identical fingerprints, AND if you want to lose weight and not sure if "celery has negative calories", you might be interested to read Anahad O'Connor's "Never Shower in a Thunderstorm". He is a New York Times columnist and he brings experts for answers. Then, you will sleep without fear. At least, until the new legends are invented!!!

Many legends are demonstrated to be false. Many of them can be based on a tiny piece of fact, however slight.

The gullibility can be frightening. I had a call from an extremely tearful client who heard from her colleague about the 2012 Nostradamus prediction. She called me and she must have called at least 10 other people. She also told me that she had to take an increased dosage of her anxiety meds.

I don't fear Nostradamus predictions or the radiation from the microwave, but I do fear computer viruses, poisonous Halloween candy, and I fear that I might be tricked to pay at Neiman Marcus "The $250 cookie recipe" because these sound probable, too close to our everyday lives.

The myth creators are having fun. And, they count on the fear factor. The readers are distributing the stories because they either want to share the fun with the ones they love or to warn them. Urban legends are perpetuated by the gullible. And we all are gullible sometimes.