Mind OVER Reality

[RobertScorpio]

Have you, or someone you know, ever been so fooled by something that you were convinced it was real....what do I mean???

Real story;

Five months ago, I come to work. At work I have three computers at my desk, which is real cool. Why all the computers? Because the US GOVERNMENT loves overkill..

Any way, I get a call from my friend Bill. He works at a place where browsing the net is not allowed..at all. He calls me with excitement in his voice. He says, "Rob, they found a living, baby dinosaur in the congo. A TREX!".

So, he tells me the story..and that he was up all night following the story off and on as he was doing work at home....until 4am when he fell asleep...

So, he askes if I heared the news...

In my car I have SIRUS...so I have CNN--NBC, even Fox, news channels which I listen to on the way to work, if I'm not on the NFL network. As it turned out, that day, I listened to a CD so I didn't hear the news...so, I become excited and head to the net...drugereport--Reuters--AP wires....

Nothing...

But my friend assures me its true...

Eventually I start thinking...if there is a baby dinosaur then, duh, Where is the mom????....

What it was, I found out, was the GEORGE NORI (Art Bell replacement)..and my friend fell asleep in the last hour where they tell you it was a fake news show as if it were real...


He believed it...and so did I....it was fun while it lasted..

Rob

 

[judge alba]

got my partner convinced that a haggis was a creature from Scotland when i first met her had a friend of mine do a species file on it and pictures. my partner even convinced half her family until her older brother twigged something was up and brought home a haggis from the local butcher.

also me and few friends convinced another that an alien had been found dead on the beach near us. we had rigged up a false picture and told him the body was in a secrect bunker near by.
we told him where it was and he went over there, it was funny as hell watching him sneak into this farmers field towards a pill box where we had set up another friend under a sheet on a bench got a cuople to act as security garuds. anyways my friend still oblivious to it sneaked up to the 'bunker' and got inside we saw he was nervous as anything that was when my friend on the bench sat up scaring the hell out of my other friend who promtly took off like a gazelle on steroids. he told us about it for days until we had to tell him it wasn't real.

 

[Zachary Smith]

I once convinced a friend of mine that Sally Field played the little girl throw into the lake in the original "Frankenstein" (1931). I also convinced her that Alfred Hitchcock played Spanky in the "Our Gang" comedies when he was a child and that was how he got into show business.

I don't think she was good with math.

 

[RobertScorpio]

got my partner convinced that a haggis was a creature from Scotland when i first met her had a friend of mine do a species file on it and pictures. my partner even convinced half her family until her older brother twigged something was up and brought home a haggis from the local butcher.

also me and few friends convinced another that an alien had been found dead on the beach near us. we had rigged up a false picture and told him the body was in a secrect bunker near by.
we told him where it was and he went over there, it was funny as hell watching him sneak into this farmers field towards a pill box where we had set up another friend under a sheet on a bench got a cuople to act as security garuds. anyways my friend still oblivious to it sneaked up to the 'bunker' and got inside we saw he was nervous as anything that was when my friend on the bench sat up scaring the hell out of my other friend who promtly took off like a gazelle on steroids. he told us about it for days until we had to tell him it wasn't real.

Wow...I would hate you if you did something like that to me..great story..

Rob

 

[RobertScorpio]

I once convinced a friend of mine that Sally Field played the little girl throw into the lake in the original "Frankenstein" (1931). I also convinced her that Alfred Hitchcock played Spanky in the "Our Gang" comedies when he was a child and that was how he got into show business.

I don't think she was good with math.

Huh...I like that...thats pretty funny!!!

Rob

 

[Zulu Romeo]

For my whole life I was convinced that the singer Tracy Chapman was a man. It wasn't until a colleague at my final year in university sat me down and broke the news to me. My whole world view shifted axis suddenly, yet there's still a part of me that still believes otherwise.

 

[An Officer]

Reminds me of the Orson Wells 1938 radio drama of The war of the worlds. He presented the story as a series of news bulletins, which had some Americans believing Martians had landed. It caused thousands to panic and flee their homes...

Present something with a little bit of authority, and you could have people believe almost anything...

 

[Lookingglassman]

I'm convinced Prince Charles is gay and Camille Bowles is a drag queen.

 

[An Officer]

^

I think you could be half right.

 

[RobertScorpio]

For my whole life I was convinced that the singer Tracy Chapman was a man. It wasn't until a colleague at my final year in university sat me down and broke the news to me. My whole world view shifted axis suddenly, yet there's still a part of me that still believes otherwise.

I totally get that one!!!

Along the same lines...when AIR SUPPLY hit it big in the late 70s I was so convinced the lead singer was a girl I bet my friend...and, for some reason, we found a hard time trying to find pictures of them since the only album we found at the record store had a picture of a Balloon on it....

I eventually lost that $20 bet, and that was a lot of money back in 1978 or so....

Rob

 

[FordSVT]

^Yeah, I thought the lead singer of Air Supply was a woman until I was about twelve.

 

[Plecostomus]

My step-father convinced me at a very young age that potatoes were mined from the ground. Seriously. Huge underground potato-mines in the east, open-face potato mines out west. On and on about the Great Potato Mining Disaster in Pennsylvania that lead to the simultaneous invention of powdered flakes AND French Fries.

...this had two effects on me. 1) I never took him at his word without doing research first and 2) I developed a love of pouring over books and verifying facts and figures which lead me to my technical career today.

I often wonder if that's what he intended all along.

 

[archeryguy1701]

When I was young, we had these neighbors that my family really wasn't fond of, but we would play nice. One night, I had told their kids a story about how there was a creature living in our barn that would kill animals and eat them in there. I told them that I would occassionally find a bone in there, and that anything that went in there after dark never came out. The neighbors didn't buy it, mainly because the relayed the story to their mom, who then chewed my ass and made me apologize (bitch). However, I completely bought the story, and was afraid to go into the barn after dark for 4 or 5 years afterwards.

In the dorms I live in, we had a deaf kid living there named Jason, who earned the nickname TCAP Jason, or To Catch A Predator Jason. This was because he was always online hitting on really young girls. During the summer, he ran away to be with a 15 year old. During the school year (after his parents tracked him down and returned him to us ), he started hitting it up with an 11 year old online. They decided that they wanted to get married and she wanted to have his babies and he was going to run off to meet her and blah blah blah. Now, no one liked him. He was loud. He was rude. He was antagonizing. And he liked 11 year olds.

He and my old roommate used to be friends on IM, but Jason removed him. However, the roomie still had Jason added, so he sent him an IM one night posing as the girl's dad. First he started off making simple threats... "Are you screwing with my 11 year old daughter? That is illegal! If you don't knock it off, I am contacting the FBI!" When TCAP made a comment that the "dad" didn't know where he was, the roomie responded, "You are in the computer lab at the (college) dorms." This freaked TCAP out and he tried running away (to the state where the 11 year old lived for some reason ). One of the RAs say him going and brought him back.

The roomie kept messing with him over IM with the FBI threats. One night, he even bhad TCAP so scared that when the roomie told him to quietly sit in the corner for an hour, he did it. When asked about it, he even said, "Because the guy on the internet told me to!" Finally, it all came to a head when the "dad" told him that the FBI were on their way and that they were on College Dr as they spoke. TCAP jumped up, and once again started running to the state where the 11yo lived. This time, security caught him and brought him back, and he's now staying at home with his parents.

 

[judge alba]

Reminds me of the Orson Wells 1938 radio drama of The war of the worlds. He presented the story as a series of news bulletins, which had some Americans believing Martians had landed. It caused thousands to panic and flee their homes...

Present something with a little bit of authority, and you could have people believe almost anything...

i would loved to done something like that would have been funny

 

[Terengo]

At this very moment, there is a woman at my checkout desk telling her 8-year-old (?) son that they had to cut off his original tail, but she promises not to cut it off again if it grows back!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I once had my youngest brother convinced that our parents had another child before me, who was named "Sloopy," and who they had to to give up for adoption because they were poor and unmarried. We still tease him about that one.

 

[Australis]

You guys who believed the lead singer of Air Supply was female - you aren't alone.

Rod Stewart also believed this and was trying to set up a date with 'her'. True story.

And no, not one of the 'true stories' on here

 

[Australis]

double post

 

[All Seeing Eye]

There was once this program on the TV where it was a fake news broadcast saying that asteroids had been detected heading for a collision course for Earth and they went all out with reporters around the world talking to supposed members of the public and their were animations and shit like that. We were at my mother in laws at the time and 3 of my sis in laws came in from outside and we all decided to act serious and tell them we were going to be hit by extinction sized asteroids in the next few hours.
They believed the whole fricking thing and were shitting themselves and nearly crying.

 

[ITL]

When one of my cousins was a little kid, my dad had him convinced that creatures such as the Hippopottopussycow and Rhinossopig were real animals. However, the Duck-Billed Platypus was shot down in flames by my cousin when it was mentioned. "That's just silly!" he said.

Life imitating zoological history...