Margaret Jimenez July, 2007

“Virtual Love”

What is it about people that make them believe the stories told by others? In seeking to respond to

this question, one must also ask, why are people so credulous in the face of obvious untruth? We, humans,

are known for our propensity to believe in things we cannot see and when it comes to our fellow man, we

earnestly want to believe that everyone tells the truth no matter how illogical that “truth” may seem.

Therefore, I believe that the answer to the first question is that people are gullible because inherently most

desire to believe in the integrity of their fellow man.

In The New Yorker article, “Virtual Love”1 written by Tad Friend, the writer recounts how a boy

named Tony Johnson was able to beguile, entrance and worm his way into the lives of others by weaving a

tale of affliction, suffering and redemption that was so heartrending, so affecting, so unsuspecting that the

hearers could only accept it as fact. Tony’s tales of physical and sexual abuse were harrowing indeed, but the

news that he was suffering from AIDS as a consequence only added to his tale of woe and deepened the

compassion of those who listened. Tony told stories of being violated by pedophiles, attempting suicide and

then subsequently being rescued by a kindly woman, named Vicki. Each story he recounted only added to

the listener’s genuine concern and desire to reach out and help this pitiful young boy. They embraced his tale

of woe at face value, not once subjecting it to critical scrutiny and because of this, consequently, Tony was

able to reap more than just financial rewards with his deception. Ultimately, I believe that the greatest reward

Tony reaped for himself was the satisfaction of knowing he was smarter and more cunning than these he

preyed upon including such noted individuals as author, Armistead Maupin and beloved television

personality, Fred Rogers, to name just a couple of the persons who fell for his scam.

Wikipedia refers to “gullibility” as the state of being easily deceived. Many of us think only those

who are uneducated, ignorant, naïve or immature can be gullible; however, the aforementioned story only

1
Tad Friend, “Virtual Love”, The New Yorker (November 26, 2001): 88-99

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illustrates how simple it is for even high browed, wealthy and or otherwise intelligent individuals to fall into

this state. Like the snake oil salesmen of old, who made their living by making false claims of miracle

potions we too earnestly want to believe that, as a whole, people are honest with one another. Why do you

think we believe all these exaggerated and sensationalized stories that circulate around the Internet,

eventually becoming urban legends? It is because we believed in these same stories when we passed them

along. Even I, who consider myself moderately intelligent and a fair judge of character (even slightly

cynical at times) find myself more often than not giving people the benefit of the doubt. In doing so, many

times I’ve found myself saddened, disillusioned and more often than not broke because of my proclivity for

wanting to believe in the good in others.

In contrast to gullibility, skeptical individuals question the validity or authenticity of something

purporting to be factual. A scientific skeptic would question the reliability of certain kinds of claims by

subjecting them to a systematic investigation. A philosophical skeptic would be more apt to display

intellectual caution and suspend judgment until he or she gathers their facts about a matter. These

individuals tend to maintain and proclaim doubting attitudes toward values, plans, statements or even the

character of others and many of them are not timid in saying so. Skeptics call themselves by many names –

doubter, freethinker, agnostic even unbeliever. Austin Cline2, an online writer, who declares himself a

skeptic, argues that “gullibility is an affliction…a widespread product of people’s failure to properly apply

reason, logic and skepticism to a claim or idea.” Whether or not you personally agree with Mr. Cline’s

reasoning, it raises a good point about how broad the problem of gullibility is. I wonder, how many people do

we know, that are personally affected by it or would we find ourselves within that number?

As mentioned before, gullible individuals can be from any walk of life and to illustrate this point

about 10 years ago, an article3 was written by James K. Glassman and published in The Washington Post.

This journalist wrote about the surprising results of a science project that was conducted at the time by a 14

2
http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutskepticism/p/Gullibility.htm
3
James K. Glassman, “Dihydrogen Monoxide: Unrecognized Killer”, The Washington Post (Copyright 1997)

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year old junior high school student, named Nathan Zohner. Nathan began his project by distributing amongst

his peers a report that had been circulating around the Internet titled, “Dihydrogen Monoxide: The

Unrecognized Killer”. The report asserted that a chemical compound, dihydrogen monoxide (or DHMO)

had been implicated in the deaths of thousands of Americans every year, mainly through accidental ingestion.

In gaseous form, DHMO caused severe burns, was found to be caustic (a major component of acid rain), had

been found in excised tumors of cancer patients and was so widespread and accessible its presence was

confirmed in every river, stream, lake and reservoir in America. Therefore Nathan’s question to his peers,

smart chemistry students, was – judging from these facts, do think DHMO should be banned? At the

conclusion of the project, 86 percent of Nathan’s peers voted to ban dihydrogen monoxide because it had

caused too many deaths. This was both surprising and appalling to Nathan because dihydrogen monoxide is

a scientific name, albeit relatively unknown, for plain old water, which can drown you, scald you or make

you go to the bathroom. Nathan who titled his project, “How Gullible Are We?” and won the grand prize at

his science fair concluded that he “was appalled that my peers were so easily misled…I don’t feel

comfortable with their current level of understanding.” Certainly we can’t fault Nathan for feeling somewhat

disillusioned with his peers who obviously either lacked scientific knowledge or didn’t bother to check their

facts.

Whether or not you believe people fall for stories because of naiveté, lack of scientific knowledge or

just simple blind faith, the crux of it is that most of us want to believe that what we’re being told is plain old

truth. In the end, you really can’t fault people for wanting to genuinely trust that there is still integrity to be

found in their fellow man.