Author: Ge Jun
Source: Justice Network
In 1750, in the Paris area of France, word of mouth spread an extremely absurd thing: many cases of child disappearance were actually committed by the royal family, because King Louis XV bathed the blood of children to cure leprosy. Rumors circulated, and the crowd was excited. Soon after, there was a vicious case of a Parisian mass attack on the police, and the king ordered a suppression of arrests, which further deteriorated the relationship between the government and the masses in paris and became a precursor to the French Revolution.
This rumor arose and was related to some real tragedies in the Middle Ages. The historical Countess Elizabeth Ballett bathed in human blood, and this horrific case is still fresh in people's minds. People in that era generally believed in the existence of vampires, and the rumor that "the king bathed in the blood of children" made the vampire legend activate in folk opinion, gradually forming a panic image of collective psychology.
If the truth and common sense are all hidden, then rumors will spread like wildfires in the spring wind.
1.
Research on rumors, the first to promote the French scholar Jean-Noel Cap Ferrée's book "Rumors: The World's Oldest Media". Today, what our insiders call the "Trilogy of Understanding Public Opinion" is, in addition to "Rumors", there are also Walter Lippmann's "Public Opinion" and Liu Hailong's "Propaganda". This trilogy is a must-read classic for media people.
The praise and disparagement of the word "rumor" is not as simple as we think in our daily life, it is not only "false information" and "false statements". Rumors are true or false, and the final result is either falsified or verified, so its essential feature is "unconfirmed". In this regard, the author "takes us into the core of the law of rumors and fundamentally into the realm of faith."
In the 1950s, Hollywood actor James Dean became a superstar for starring in highly appealing works such as Dreamland, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant. His photographs were repeatedly printed on posters large and small, Coca-Cola, Levi's jeans, Zippo lighters, and even the veteran Eagles wrote him into songs. Movies, photographs, and even the real James Dean became a symbol of youth rebellion, but now, along with Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Levi's jeans, it has become a symbol of American culture and a legend for a generation.
On September 30, 1955, in California, James Dean, a sports enthusiast, died in a car accident while racing at 160 kilometers per hour. However, the idol is immortal, and for 50 years after his death, people have been spreading various rumors. He was rumored to have been disfigured by a car accident and has been living in seclusion on a farm near Los Angeles; The wreckage of the car he was driving was bought by the workers who repaired it, but when the car was unloaded from the truck, the brakes loosened and the legs of a bystander were crushed; The engine of the car that caused the accident was bought by Henry, an avid collector of engines, but soon after Henry was seriously injured in the race...
Most peculiarly, after the crash, the body of the car that James Dean was driving was transported to the city he was going to that day, and the delivery truck threw the body out of the car when it braked, killing a person and causing a series of crashes. Finally, 13 years after the crash, the magical car disappeared and seemed to be taken away from the world by some supernatural force.
People only believe in what they believe, believe in their own wishes, so rumors carry these wishes around, and they do not die.
James Dean is dead isn't he? Walter Lippmann said in Opinion: "Once the system of stereotypes is completely fixed, our attention is drawn to the facts that support the system, and to the facts that contradict it." Probably because those facts coincide with it, good people can always find countless reasons for goodness, and evil people can always find countless reasons for evil. ”
We are all familiar with the experiment or game in which ten people are lined up, the first person says a word to the second person, the second person relays it to the third person, and finally to the last person, the original words and their original meanings are likely to have been lost. For the purpose of pursuing timeliness and facilitating dissemination, language is simplified and abbreviated, and there will be too many additions and losses in repeated circulation, so that it is unrecognizable and becomes a "fragment of facts".
Rising to the political level, Lippmann questioned the "public" worshipped by traditional democratic theories, arguing that the public was merely a "phantom" and that "most of the public involved did not have a full understanding of things, or even interest in understanding." The only thing they can do is... Express the strongest feelings of defiance... I can't keep myself awake." He may only see what he wants to see, and if he can't, he will add it with imagination. So, not surprisingly, the election period is a period of high rumors.
2.
The imagination that accompanies rumors can be romantic or scary.
The accumulation of gold and the destruction of bones are the most extreme forms of rumors. The Danish film The Hunt can provide the best example of this. In the film, a little girl named Carla lives in a family where her parents lack love and discipline for her, and she inevitably transfers her feelings to Lucas, the male protagonist engaged in early childhood education. She developed a hazy affection for Lucas, a tenderness similar to that of a father. She couldn't tell the subtle emotion at all, and she tried desperately to express it, but when she gave a gift to Lucas, she was rejected. For her, it was like asking for love from her parents— and that led to the beginning of a lie, the beginning of a tragedy.
This lie was told by Carla in order to discredit Lucas. Carla's retaliatory lies made Lucas bear the charge of sexually assaulting the girl, and for a time, everyone was angry. Starting from the head of the kindergarten, to the parents, to everyone in the town; From talking alone, to notifying and warning parents, to calling the police to get the police involved, everything makes sense in people's eyes. Everyone is self-absorbed in what they perceive as a "sense of justice" and cannot extricate themselves. As a result, Lucas, once a good gentleman, became the object of exclusion and oppression of the whole town, the anger of friends, the distrust of his ex-wife, the death of his dog and the malice of strangers, etc., which eventually made Lucas almost collapse.
In this incident, no one's eyes were "snow bright". The so-called "truth" is the disgusting picture imagined by the kindergarten aunt, the oil and vinegar of the rumors spread again and again, the indisputable of the former friends, the addition of the fists and feet of unrelated passers-by, and the final gunshot.
Public opinion completes the trial of a man and completely destroys a man. Film critic Europa once wrote: Why a calm and orderly society would let a lie so lightly lead to such severe punishment. And in today's online world, why is it that with just a paragraph of text and a few pictures, everyone believes that they are closer to the truth than others, and have more responsibility and obligation to carry out personal attacks and criticize the truth. On a worse level, the so-called good and evil, white and black, most people can not distinguish at all, may not be related to their personal lives at all - whether in the past, present or future, this is a pessimistic situation! Because, one day, the muzzle of the gun turns, and you yourself may become the next prey.
From this perspective, it is not difficult to understand why Lippmann has deep doubts about public opinion. Another of his books, Phantom Public, was written shortly after World War I. In 1917, the United States intervened in "World War I", and Congress unanimously passed the "Anti-Espionage Act" and the "Anti-Sedition Act" at an astonishing speed, and if someone obstructed the government from issuing war bonds and blocked conscription, they would be sued to the law. All of this was supported by the majority of the people and deeply influenced the subsequent Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and the Afghan War. Lippmann said: "... All of this constitutes a terrible monarchical rule under which honest and upright thought is not allowed, where moderation is not supported, and where madness replaces reason. "Public opinion will be coerced into ignoring black and white.
Gustav Le Pen makes it clear in The Ragtag: "The isolated individual knows very well that when he is alone, he cannot burn a palace or loot a shop ... But when he becomes a member of a group, he realizes that numbers give him the power that is enough to make him think of killing and plundering. "The human body is indeed capable of generating a great deal of fanatical passion, which destroys the decay, whether it can sweep away evil or kill innocents indiscriminately.
In order to achieve this goal, "some 'myths' that can easily circulate in the group can be generated, not only because of their extreme credulity, but also because of the consequences of the wonderful distortion of events in the imagination of the crowd." The simplest things that happen in full view of the crowd will soon become unrecognizable, conflating the illusions caused by distorted imagination with real events. ”
Examples given in Rumors: The World's Oldest Media include the logo of P&G, which depicts a side image of the roman mythical god Jupiter the Elder in the shape of a crescent moon. I don't know from what year, rumors began to violently attack this logo: the logo alludes to the antichrist incarnation of the Moon Sect and its founder, and the stars on the pattern can outline the number "666", which is the symbol of Satan. Wave after wave of rumors, want to put the company to death. "However, the logo has been around since the creation of this completely Puritan-style company and is more than a hundred years old."
In April 1985, P&G had to remove the logo on all its products.
3.
In 1980, the German political scientist and communication scholar Elisabeth Norel Neumann published the book "The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – The Skin of Our Society", which further perfected the theory of the "spiral of silence". Perhaps Ms. Neumann herself did not expect that this model theory would leave a strong mark on the entire history of human communication. Today, we in the Internet world will also be affected by this "spiral". Neumann's "spiral of silence" contains the proposition that mass communication influences and constrains public opinion by creating an "environment of opinion."
In the preface to the book, Neumann tells the story of a small town in Italy, inhabited for generations by loyal people, as well as the counts and countesses of great stature. In the castle on the hill outside the town, there lived a strange man, and his outrageous behavior has always made the people of the city very angry. One day, the strange man chased a unicorn. When people saw it, they shook their heads. After a while, the count and countess were seen also chasing a unicorn. This became a signal that everyone in the city should have a unicorn. Then the freak brought in the serpent-haired banshee and the human-headed sphinx, and at first all the people were frightened, but when the count and the countess did the same, this behavior became a trend again...
The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke once said that the dominance of authority, the rules and vices of fashion, the guided public opinion, these things are more personally followed than any religious precept or statute. As a result, unicorns, snake-haired banshees, and dragon-tailed monsters may become fashionable, become fanatical pursuits, and become desperate blind obedience. Neumann introduced Lippmann's theory of "stereotypes" into his own observations, arguing that "stereotypes" are cumulonimbus clouds in the "climate of opinions", and that members of society perceive the "climate of opinions" and act in convergence.
In Rumors: The World's Oldest Media, the authors reveal human curiosity and the spread of various rumors brought about by curiosity, "those markets for products that consume a lot of money provide a typical rumor production field." In 1984, France launched the first liquid detergent, which was used by a large number of consumers, but since then rumors have spread about the detergent "washing out of the underwear with a big hole". Even if all the rumors use this detergent, and no one "washes out the underwear with a big hole", it is hearsay.
Other similar rumors include fluoride toothpaste, non-stick pans, ouzo, contact lenses — rumors that contact lenses cause blindness. Many try to preserve their past spending habits, use rumors to legitimize their rejection of change, and attack the world they know is ruled by science and technology.
On the other hand, rumor sales science has also emerged. In 1984, the Marseille Grand Mill Bread Company introduced a new type of baguette. The company originally wanted to advertise on television, but it was cancelled due to insufficient budget, and its competitors rumored that the new bread was not selling well. Some companies exaggerate the role of products or services, and also use the means of creating rumors, similar to the "chicken blood" and "qigong literacy" that we once knew, similar to some film and television companies using "extraordinary means" to promote their own products...
Rumors are often the product of imagination, either because of good intentions or because of despicable motives; The frenzy of public opinion will accelerate the spread of rumors, will engulf people who do not know the truth to generate fanatical emotions, and the creators of rumors are often fanatics. Even, in order to draw the desired conclusions, some historians do not hesitate to distort or falsify history, or use unreliable documents, and replace historical facts with legends, and even maliciously cover up historical truths.
Amartya Sen said in Identity and Violence: "In a close-knit community, residents can instinctively have a team spirit; But on the other hand, they can also throw bricks at the homes of migrants who have just moved in from elsewhere. In his all-encompassing book, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argues that these actions are driven not only by the inextricable hatred, but also by the confusion of thought that makes people disregard the truth and common sense, which is the breeding ground for rumors.
If rumors are like ice and snow, then only the truth is like sunshine, which can make the ice and snow melt.
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