Stupidity spreads

I'm writing this post in English in the hope that British comedian David Mitchell, of whom I am a fan, will read it and thus provide me with a fleeting sense of proximity to stardom. He has written an article about a Tweet by Victoria Beckham, where she posted a picture of what she joshingly called a hovering UFO.

David Mitchell is of course correct to assume that Victoria Beckham knew what she was taking a picture of and that it was no spaceship. Therefore, he is also correct in that the respondents are fools who couldn't recognize a joke with the aid of three reference books and a professor of comedy. One particular point, however, is what prompts this response:

The second is the respondents' belief that, if Victoria Beckham thought she'd spotted an alien spacecraft, her only reaction would be to tweet about it – and to wait until the next day to do so.

This tells us, not necessarily that the respondents are idiots, but that the respondents either would react that way themselves or that they are convinced that there are people who would. The tragic fact is that in either case, they are correct.

If I or someone else with a clue about anything witnessed what we believed to be an actual UFO (used here in the technically incorrect sense of "extraterrestrial vessel"), we would of course react differently. We would investigate, we would figure out to whom you're supposed to report it, we would consider our world-view permanently altered. We certainly would not take one photo, post it on Twitter the next day and then go on with our lives.

But there are plenty of people of the other sort. They believe aliens are zipping around all the time, they believe crystals heal, they believe that unfathomably distant balls of gas individually dictate the fate of each human, and they somehow manage to combine the seemingly contradictory notions that a) this is common knowledge accepted by all reasonable people and b) this is all covered up in a huge conspiracy by the scientific, medical and political establishment.

To these people, the reaction ascribed to Victoria Beckham is perfectly reasonable. A UFO sighting is a noteworthy event, certainly, but not world-changing. They would never report it; the report would be ridiculed and ignored, it would put the Men in Black on their trail and they don't want to provide the evil government with information if they can help it. The evil government presumably doesn't hang out on Twitter.

Victoria Beckham's respondents either are such people (the nicer ones, probably, sad that this particular UFO sighting wasn't one) or think that Victoria Beckham is (the assholes). In a world where everything exists and stupidity is loud, assuming sincerity becomes the default strategy.