Of Piss and Rain

There's a saying I once heard, probably somewhere in the south, that goes: "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining." This pithy little colloquiality simply means "Don't try to fool me with anything so obvious".

But you know, I've noticed that people keep pissing down our backs, and instead of calling them on it, we keep cursing the weather man instead.

So I began to wonder: Do we all secretly want to be fooled, or are we just hard-wired to be taken advantage of?

I think it's probably a little bit of both, depending on who you are and the situation.

For example, there are those among us --- people who vote and drive cars mind you --- who believe the Apollo moon landing in 1969 was a hoax. Of course, the hoax scenario has been debunked many times by many people, to the point that it has become a tiresome debate topic. Hey, I know we're all gluttonous, beer-drinking, porn-consuming drones, but we're not completely without our accomplishments. It's been shown conclusively that we, as a species, did in fact land on the moon. But the conspiracy theorists still do not believe it. The moon landing hoax supporters refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence against their claims.

So the only conclusion we can draw from this is that they want to be fooled. They need it. They crave the conspiracy theorist piss that's running down their backs.

On the other side of the coin, there are situations where our own natural human inclinations allow us to be taken advantage of.

For example, a stage magician isn't really performing magic. He or she instead uses the psychological tendencies and perception abilities we're all born with to fool us into thinking we're seeing something we're not. That in itself is a harmless example, but there are also some very cruel people out there who take advantage of us when we're grieving by using a dark emotional state that we are all capable of to fool us into believing that our dead loved ones are talking to us from the great beyond. That example is not so harmless, because it prohibits the natural grieving process and often can empty our wallets.

So there are cases where our own minds allow us to be fooled. Occasionally, we cannot avoid opening an umbrella instead of kicking the pisser in the groin.

But we can and should strive to learn our lessons where the mass media are concerned, because there is just too much information at our finger tips these days for us not to. We have to be able to discern the real rain from the piss. Otherwise our own credibility will be compromised.

There have been many deceptions uncovered over the years. We can look back to the Milli Vanilli debacle, and at the uproar regarding James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces to see some instances where the pissers were caught during the shake, and that's encouraging. More recently, it was discovered that some pictures coming out of the conflict in Israel/Lebanon were PhotoShopped to make them more dramatic, because as you know, war is not dramatic enough.

But despite our propensity to catch on eventually, people will still continue to relieve themselves on us and insist that it's an afternoon thunder shower.

This past week, I've heard a lot of chatter about a mystery involving a very popular Internet personality known as Lonelygirl15. For the better part of a year, Lonelygirl15 was believed to be a home-schooled teenager named Bree with a slight propensity for relating better to adults than to other teens. Bree keeps web video logs that can be accessed on various sites, each of which chronicles her everyday life, her view of things, and her misadventures with her dorky boyfriend, Daniel. She is very popular with your typical Internet geeks on YouTube and MySpace.

It turns out, however, that Bree is a 19 year old actress from New Zealand named Jessica Lee Rose, and the videos were all staged and produced by film makers. Lonelygirl15 is a hoax.

The creators identified themselves to The Associated Press as Miles Beckett, 28, of Woodland Hills, California; Mesh Flinders, 26, of Petaluma, California, and Greg Goodfried, 27, of Los Angeles.

Not one of the creators is an actual teenaged girl, or even a dorky teenaged boyfriend of a teenaged girl. They are all in their twenties, and their individual levels of dorkiness can only be guessed at, though I suspect it is very high for each of them.

Now the interesting thing about this revelation is what the hoaxers themselves are saying in response to being found out.

"We never wanted to lie to people," Beckett said.

"Our job from the beginning was not to trick people. It was to create a character that was believable," Flinders said.

Creating a believable character is one thing, but when you pass that character off like a real person and don't say anything, you're tricking people!!

That's some warm ass rain don't you think?

But look, it gets even warmer.

The creators behind the Internet video mystery teen Lonelygirl15 want their fans to know they are not a front for a big Hollywood studio marketing some upcoming film. . .

. . . The three are represented by Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency, but say they have no immediate plans to make a Lonelygirl15 movie or TV show.

Uh huh. Sure they don't.

Am I the only one who sees an Ernest P. Worrell type series of movies on the horizon? Lonelygirl15 goes to Camp? Lonelygirl15 Saves Christmas? Jim Varney should be rolling over in his grave.

Hell, he probably is, but at least he doesn't have any piss running down his back.