A man and a woman managed to see news stories shared on Facebook today without thinking it proved what they already believe.
Duncan Merchant from Rochdale, 35, and Chloe S Patton from Leicester, 44, saw a story about a stabbing in London and another about an attack on a postman in Barrow.
“Usually I see these things and think ‘See? Multiculturalism doesn’t work’ or something,” said Duncan, “but today it occurred to me that pretty much everything makes me think that and if it suggested the opposite I would either ignore it or bang on about the press censoring the truth. I think I might not be as objective as I assumed.”
Meanwhile Chloe told us, “To be honest I did find myself starting to think that this proved that we need to bring back hanging but then I remembered I am quite thick really and it’s not as if I actually have the capacity to see through the deliberate way stories are framed to manipulate my fears and prejudices.”
The phenomenon of people not actually using everything they see and hear to back up their preexisting beliefs and opinions is relatively rare.
Dr Hugh Byers from Rochdale Community University said, “Obviously none of this actually happened as we’re all bags of chemicals walking round imagining that we’re rational beings despite being biased as fuck and mostly using emotions and heuristics that evolved to help hunter gathering apes to survive. Even this made up article is biased.”
Though he’s probably just one of those namby pamby, pinko social justice warrior types so we can ignore him.
