LookingUpGullible

Yesterday my dear Mother asked me to post some more jokes here, but I don't have any at the moment --- so here's a deep truth: The word "gullible" is not in any dictionary!

Yep, it's not even a real word. (OK, we could get into a philosophical argument about what a "word" is, but not today. Nor will I debate what "is" is.)

Which reminds me of another self-referential question: How do you keep a turkey in suspense?

I'll tell you the answer later ...

(an item related to the infamous "gullible" factoid appears in today's "Marilyn vos Savant" column in Parade magazine; see also MetaJoke (18 Oct 2001), TwoGreatSecrets (9 Nov 2001), MyAffectations (19 Jan 2003), PiratesVersusNinjas (28 Jul 2004), ...)

TopicHumor - TopicPersonalHistory - TopicPhilosophy - Datetag20050227

You'll have to explain the gullible thing... People might take you at your word, especially since you've posted it on the Web for all to see -- makes you authoritative :)

The authoritative Onion reports (22 May 2002) in "Factual Error Found on Internet":

LONGMONT, CO - The Information Age was dealt a stunning blow Monday, when a factual error was discovered on the Internet. The error was found on TedsUltimateBradyBunch.com, a Brady Bunch fan site that incorrectly listed the show's debut year as 1968, not 1969.

Caryn Wisniewski, a Pueblo, CO, legal secretary and diehard Brady Bunch fan, came across the mistake while searching for information about the show's first-season cast.

"When I first saw 1968 on the web page, I thought, 'Wow, apparently, all those Brady Bunch books I've read listing 1969 as the show's first year were wrong,'" Wisniewski told reporters at a press conference. "But even though I obviously trusted the Internet, I was still kind of puzzled. So I checked other Brady Bunch fan sites, and all of them said 1969. After a while, it slowly began to sink in that the World Wide Web might be tainted with unreliable information."

and later in that same shocking article is a quote from Paul Boutin, senior editor of Wired:

"Will we ever fully trust the Web again?" Boutin asked. "We may well be witnessing the dawn of a new era of skepticism in which we no longer accept everything we read online at face value. But regardless of what the future holds, one thing is clear: The Internet's status as the world's definitive repository of incontrovertible fact has been jeopardized."

- ^z -

(correlates: DyslexicMetahumor, RipTide, DavidCopperfieldAndMissMowcher, ...)