Theories pulled out of your azz...

[JohnT]

You ever just make up something with a such a complete straight face that your audience just eats it up? I seem to find myself doing this quite often... interesting, the fact that you can say the most complete foolishness in a certain manner and be taken, if not for an expert, then at least knowledgable.

So Laura asks me, during lunch, "Why do you think people believe in God or some higher authority?" I thought about it a second and replied

"I have two reasons:

1. The Psychological. Most people don't like being in control of their own lives. God is the fallback position, the entity that they can count on when they don't want to count on themselves.

2. 4+ billion years of evolution has taught us to be afraid, wary of our predators. Now obviously, humanity has gotten rid of all its predators and is now top dog. But... people, because of 4 billion years of conditioning... we're so used to the idea of predation that we've invented 'Gods' to act as our own predators to psychologically keep us in line. Oh, we made them a bit nicer than a pack of rabid dogs, but predators our Gods are."

Well... I had her with the psychological one, but when I got into the predator discussion I finally lost my audience. The line that really took it out of here was when I started talking about sheep and wolves and, waxing cheesed-up philosophical, said " 'As the sheep fears the wolf, the sheep also loves him. Such is the way with people and their Gods."

Hell, I lost it with that one.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Hell, I do it all the time here .

[Pekka]

all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. I get huge satisfaction from telling one person inside jokes (for myself) IRL, that include massive lies about the truth. But just for the sake of that, not to benefit, I mean not to lie in a bad way. Just to tell stories of the facts, that really aren't, with straight face, and the point is to never reveal you were kidding.

[Sava]

You ever just make up something with a such a complete straight face that your audience just eats it up?

[MasterBob The Elder]

I theory that a giant radioactive monkey is actually controlling everyone.

[notyoueither]

When I was a kid I convinced a room full of other kids that spagetti came from China. Now, that might not seem like much of an accomplishment, but I then grabbed an encyclopaedia, flipped through pages and proceeded to 'read' about how spagetti is the root of rice plants that grow far, far into the ground. After harvesting the rice, local farmers pull up the roots and cut them one length at a time. Once they have gathered the roots, they hang them to dry, with small weights on the bottom, from the ceilings of their huts. That is why spagetti is so straight.

I'm pretty sure there's still some ****ed up opinions about Italian/Chinese cuisine.

[pchang]

I like expounding on art and art history to east coast liberal arts grads visiting museums in Europe.

[Pekka]

pchang, so what do you usually do.. convince them to go Las Vegas instead Paris, since they have the Eiffel tower too, plus many other nice 'realistic copies'?

[mrmitchell]

NYE: We convinced a guy (15 instead of 5) that spaghetti was harvested on the ocean floor.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by notyoueither
When I was a kid I convinced a room full of other kids that spagetti came from China.

The sad thing is, it does.

[notyoueither]

Every good lie has a kernal of truth.

[KrazyHorse]

I find that it's better to separate the lie completely from reality.

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by notyoueither
When I was a kid I convinced a room full of other kids that spagetti came from China.

As an April fool many years ago on British TV, they had pictures of a spaghetti farm, with loads of strings of spaghetti hanging from trees, and a terrifying number of people er, ate it up.

[notyoueither]

That's where I got the idea from.

It was a NFB of Canada piece, I think.

[KrazyHorse]

God bless the NFB.