Mr Gullible

I’ve been accused of many things in my past life. In fact, I’ve accused myself of having many odd personality traits. However, when somebody calls me gullible, it raises my hackles slightly. 

I hate to blow my own trumpet (and I rarely do) and when somebody tells me that I am gullible, I start to question why they think that. In almost all cases, it is the person who is accusing me of being gullible that is in fact the gullible one. 

I am trying my best to avoid politics but alas, this subject is the one that highlights gullibility and naiveness in a lot of people. Take Donald Trump for example. I don’t know why, but my internet algorithm hurls the thoughts of the MAGA brigade at me occasionally. I really should stop watching such garbage but I find myself inexorably being drawn into their thoughts and their attempts to defend the indefensible. 

The man is a pathological liar and a malignant narcissist. Why do people believe him, when he is clearly lying? He is out of his depth and the moment he opens his mouth, most people can see exactly what he is. Yet the MAGA cultists believe him, sometimes contradicting themselves defending him. 

“I would never vote for a felon!” announces a MAGA cultist. 

“Er – you actually did!” says the interviewer. 

And then they backtrack with either “Well even a felon is better than Kamala Harris!” or “That’s a democratic hoax. He isn’t guilty; he was framed!”

It’s unbelievable. 

I also can’t quite imagine how somebody would believe the bullshit served on a plate by Scientologists and why so many people fall for the nonsense that they discharge in the name of religion. I’ve mentioned before that Scientologists tried to indoctrinate me in Amsterdam when I was a young, naïve student and, naïve as I was, there was no way I was ever going to fall for their lies. And that was before I discovered that they all believe we are possessed by the souls of aliens. 

And I wonder what flat-earthers think of the Artemis II mission? I have been watching it with a great deal of interest and I am delighted that at the time of writing they are on their way back from this marvellous mission. I imagine that flat-earthers are already starting to spread rumours that it is all a complete hoax and that the evil NATO are trying to brainwash us all. We can clearly see that the planet we all live on ISN’T shaped like a stuffed-crust pizza but these gullible idiots will double down on their collective ignorance to try to convince us otherwise. 

Why are people so gullible? 

Is it a personality flaw? 

I know that things have deteriorated since the advent of social media, with people believing absolutely everything they read, especially if posted by people they apparently trust, or celebrities that they love. I think that’s the case with Donald Trump. He is or was a celebrity and that fact, combined with his extremely isolationist and right-wing political views, have managed to persuade people that he is the man for the job and “the best president we have had in my lifetime” despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. The truth is worse because history will show him to be the worst president ever. The man who said “I will lower prices, end wars and make America great again” has in fact damaged the economy, started a war (with no idea how to end it), and caused America to fall out with its closest allies, which ultimately could damage the country.

That’s the end of the political nonsense for this post. I promise. 

Instead, let me tell you about “The Banana Apocalypse”. If you haven’t heard about this, in January 2000, somebody started sending e-mails saying that imported bananas were infecting people with a disease that is reminiscent of something out of “The Walking Dead”. If you ate an imported banana then you would succumb to “necrotising fasciitis” which would cause your skin to develop huge purple boils that eventually collapse and take away your skin with it, making you look like a Zombie.  

Loads of people believed this nonsense, despite the CDC saying that it was all fabricated. In the end, there were so many people believing it that they had to set up a “banana hotline” to deal with distraught gullible people who ignored the experts. These gullible people spread the rumour and refused to believe the experts who said it was all bullshit. 

What can you do under these circumstances? 

I think that people should question absolutely everything, especially if comes from a sensationalist source, like social media. I think because I have a scientific mind, I try to analyse things before I even begin to start believing them – and even then I keep alive a healthy dose of scepticism in case I have been fooled. 

For example, with Scientology, I could perhaps have been naïve enough to believe that I had a personality disorder that meant that I might need help not to deteriorate to the point where I need something around me to stop me from hurling myself in front of a tram. When it happened, I knew that I was happy and that suicide was the furthest thing from my mind (as it is now and has always been) and that made me question their motives. Had they eventually told me that aliens called Thetans live in my body and that I will rise to become some sort of ethereal cosmic wanderer when I evacuate my corporeal form, I would have laughed and told them to piss off. 

I question everything and I don’t commit myself. I know that the Earth is a globe; I know that Donald Trump is a lying, manipulative malignant narcissist; I know that Adolf Hitler didn’t emigrate to Argentina; I know that Elvis Presley died in the 1970s and isn’t hiding from the Mafia; I know that the Nazis didn’t build a base on the Moon. 

Actually, I would pay money to see an argument between a flat-earther and a person who believed that there are Nazis planning the Fourth Reich on the dark side of the moon. 

Maybe Pink Floyd could write a song about that.