Today, I confess myself incredibly, remarkably disappointed.  And that is my fault.  Allow me to explain.

As has been made clear recently, a lot of people, in their boredom, have invented and/or forwarded utterly ludicrous conspiracy theories.  Some of them are relatively harmless, albeit stupid, little ditties.  Others are deliberately harmful, albeit in subtle ways.  And what is fascinating to me is how people give away their biases based on what they share online.

You guys have tells.  Just so you know.  Some of us pay attention to that.

For instance, anyone who is paying attention can quickly sort out who is against women’s rights and who is racist.  You can also ferret out who has advanced degrees and extensive experience, and who does not.  You can see those biases in the sheer numbers they stand behind.  I’m sure that sounds strange at first, but allow me to explain.

Statistics are peculiar things.  They are surprisingly easy to manipulate, to “bend,” depending upon your particular slant.  So the real trick is to be an intelligent consumer of information.  Arguably, very few people meet even that simple benchmark, but we’ll leave that for later.  A recent meme came up that I immediately recognized as a completely false bit of propaganda.  How could I recognize it immediately, you might inquire?  It’s all in the title.

This particular meme had a title of “Cause of Deaths Between January 1 and April 1, 2020.”  This is where I’m going to take you to school, because if you haven’t been exposed to this before, you need to understand how it works.  People/entities/organizations routinely exploit you through these techniques, and, for my own sanity, if nothing else, I’d love for you to be aware.

  1. This is actually quite important.  Statistical reports go by quarters.  Those quarters are in three-month increments.  Those increments are January 1-March 31, April 1-June 30, July1-September 30, October 1-December 31.  So, if a meme that has something like, “Number of Recorded COVID-19 Deaths from January 1, 2020 to April 1, 2020,” it’s already false.  Completely fucking false.  I can’t emphasize that enough.  That is a tell.  It’s an even BIGGER tell if the title is, “Number of Recorded COVID-19 Deaths Compared to Abortions from January 1 to April 1, 2020.”  Notice I added a comparison AND dropped the date of the year on the January 1 piece AND made the “quarter” end on April 1st.  So the author can put any number by anything that starts in ANY January. That’s another tell in two ways.  I gave myself room to manipulate data, and I told you what my actual agenda is.  Stay with me on this.
  2. Here’s the next ruse.  We’ll ignore #1 above for the moment.  Let’s pretend any remarkable statistician wouldn’t make such an obvious mistake as to quote statistics in a quarter through April 1.  (April Fools, mother fucker!) The next ruse is quoting statistics as if they all apply to the date range stated in the title.  Yeah, scammers will get you there.  They will quote, for instance, everyone who died of cancer in “a” year, as if that has anything to do with an infectious disease.  Or they will quote, often incorrectly, all the reported abortions in the United States EVER.  Again, the title gives them that leeway, and they compare it to an infectious disease.  That is both a call to an action they desire and a political statement.  Remarkably, it doesn’t even matter if it’s true.  It usually isn’t.  But you read it, and that sticks in your head, if only subconsciously.
  3. Data is surprisingly easy to misrepresent.  Here is an easy way that is done: take actual statistics from various time periods and gel them up all together under a specific heading with a specific date range.  Let’s say you are comparing the number of recorded deaths from COVID-19 from January 1 to April 1, 2020 (see number one above for why that doesn’t happen in real life) to the number of aborted fetuses.  You grab the number of COVID-19 deaths put that at the bottom of your list.  You grab the number of flu deaths from the entirety of last year and put that above COVID-19 Q1 deaths.  You take the number of known aborted fetuses EVER in the United States and put that at the very top of your list, as if they fit in that limited pretend-quarter date range.  It’s a cute trick.  But it’s effective if you aren’t looking for it or, worse, if whatever the author is selling speaks to your preconceived notions, that may or may not have any validity.
  4. Finally, one must evaluate motive.  While it is clearly mother fucking obvious that nearly 11 million abortions were not performed between January 1 and April 1, 2020 (again, see point number one above), particularly not in THIS YEAR, this is the coup de gras.  People are ALWAYS selling something.  In fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t take a damn thing I have written here seriously without looking it up first.  However, if you’ve looked it up and figure out that I have an idea that I know what I’m talking about, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU FOR DOING YOUR RESEARCH RIGHT NOW!!!

This rant was actually a product of something one of my long-time yoga teachers published on her site.  She is someone I looked up to; someone I admired.  I will not give credence to what she posted by republishing it here.  Nor will I mention her by name.  I already called her out privately and she, respectfully, took down the bull shit she posted.  But she, someone I actually revered, still saw fit to post it in the first place.  Without scrutiny.  And it made me think long and hard about who I revere and for what reasons.  She effectively removed herself from the pedestal on which I placed her.  A pedestal on which I should never have placed her and she never asked me to.  And it dawned on me then that we are all human, all fallible, and none of us really deserve to be on a pedestal.  I know a few people have put me on a pedestal for reasons I truthfully cannot comprehend, but please understand, I neither deserve nor want to be there.  It’s a long way to fall.  Especially if you’re a tall, skinny bitch.

One last note: beware of false equivalences. When someone asserts that X-hundred thousand people die every year from cancer and we don’t shut the country down for that, you stare at them bemusedly and tell them, “Because cancer isn’t a highly contagious pathogen spread by an aerosol effect, but Coronavirus is, you moron.” Further, please do not belittle the misfortunes and deaths of others by making those kinds of imbecilic comparisons. It is dreadfully unkind and unnecessary.

I say this without reservation: LOVE TO MY PEEPS!  YOU ARE AMAZING, AND WHILE I CANNOT SEND ENOUGH LOVE, YOU DESERVE ALL THE LOVE I CAN SEND! Keep fighting the good fight, look out for each other, take care of each other, be well and stay healthy.