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| On the Boards..... Winter 2000 This all began when my long-standing curiousity about message boards led me to the ones on Yahoo. I wanted to see what people were saying, compare it to what I know, and see if I could offer any new insights. It was harmless on my part, I knew to not let myself take any of it too seriously. I gave myself a week to carry out this experiment, since I felt that was enough time to learn what I wanted to without becoming a permanent fixture. So I picked the topic that tends to inflame my passions most: the situation in Cuba. I knew I had to be calm about this and keep my personal feelings in check, and stick with the facts. I also knew that due to my extensive research, based largely on my discussions with a wide variety of sources, including regular Cuban citizens, members of the exile community, former Cuban Intelligence agents, and dissidents on the island, I knew exactly what I was talking about. So what did I find? To be fair, some people were pretty moderate and had some idea about the situation in Cuba. Others were a bit too zealous in their anti-Communism, anti-Clintonism, anti-liberals beliefs. There were some there who, although they did not agree with what I was saying, acknowledged that my opinion was just as valid as theirs. And not surprisingly, I found that almost everyone got their opinions from what they saw on the news. And because the media portrays about 1/4 of the reality of the situation, these people generally felt that the exile community was exclusively made up of violent, anti-American jerks, all with some form of ulterior motive going on; that all Cubans who make it to our shores are smuggled; and that, for all intents and purposes, Castro has not done anything all that bad. What shocked me most was my experince with the raft situation. I wrote about how numerous rafts had made it here empty, and that I myself had seen some with blood on them. A number of people responded by saying that I had totally made that up. I was so surprised, because I couldn't see why I would make something up. None of these people knew who I was, not my real identity, not anything. As far as I can see, I had not one thing to gain by making anything up. Although people constantly write their posts filled with questionable "facts," and while most people wrote posts that were nothing more than a complete parroting of what they saw on the news, it was demanded of me that I provide proof that empty rafts existed. Because they couldn't find any old news reports on the Internet about empty rafts, they therefore concluded that it was all a fabrication. And my comment about some rafts having blood on them (which I have a number of eyewitnesses for that one) was changed to read that I had said they were "all covered in blood." So I did what they asked. I provided links, and more importantly, names and numbers (all public figures, I didn't use people who are not used to dealing with the media and skeptics alike) of people who could confirm all I had written. My coup was when I included the name and number of a man who has a collection of rafts, some of which did indeed arrive here empty. Now what do you think these people did? I was hoping they would use the information to be better informed on a topic they obviously knew very little about. But no. Everyone now had an excuse. One woman told me she wouldn't call those numbers out of fear that something bad would happen to her. (Some feeling based on her "knowledge" of exiles or something). And better yet, another woman, one who rarely had anything of substance to say, continued to insist that I was lying (see more about her in my Public Ridicule page). From this little adventure, I learned two important things: 1) People on message boards must have way more time than I do, because they're on almost all day. 2) Some people, no matter how rationally you try to discuss things with them, no matter how much proof (other than the news) you give them, just don't care to know the truth. And for heaven's sake, accept the fact that there is such a thing as an empty raft. |
| Image copyright DC Comics 1979 |
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