# 2244
If you want a wildly successful website (unlike this one), the secret apparently is to publish outlandish, incendiary, and conspiratorial stories.
You see, people like conspiracy theories.
And any theory that can combine an evil government plot to enslave the world, a killer virus (man-made or at least man-modified), and a catastrophe of Biblical proportion . . . well, you know that's gonna be popular.
P.T. Barnum knew the score more than 100 years ago. And while he may have never said, "There's a sucker born every minute', he certainly made a fortune off that premise.
The Internet is the modern cradle of hoaxes and frauds, and with our advanced technology, they can spread with viral efficiency.
The recipe is easy.
Take something out of the news, like avian flu; something people have heard of . . . vaguely. Then dress it up with half truths and innuendo. Make charges, that `if true', would result in disaster for all of mankind.
Then pick an easy target as the villain, like the military or the government. Big Pharma is also good, or the military-industrial complex.
Just as long as you can point to a powerful entity - one that people already distrust.
Then release it. And watch the hits roll in.
Why, if you have advertising on your site, or better yet, can induce people to donate to your cause . . .you have a veritable gold mine.
In my youth I would have been tempted to argue with these people. I'd have debated their `facts', and have attempted to shine the light of logic on their specious arguments.
No longer.
If people want to believe that avian flu has been weaponized and will be released during the Olympics, that vaccines are an alien plot to manipulate our DNA and turn us into pod people, or that Donald Rumsfeld made millions by personally injected every serviceman with Tamiflu in 2001, then I say . . . let them.
The world is filled with billions of people who subscribe to inane, false, or patently ridiculous beliefs.
The world runs on them.
It simply isn't my job to try to disabuse people of their notions, no matter how silly they might be.
Arguing with true believers is like wrestling with a pig in the the mud. You both get dirty, and the pig sorta likes it.
Rather than engage in some Sisyphean effort to challenge these Internet rumors - and in doing so bring them more notoriety - I prefer to concentrate on avian flu related news that seems (to me at least) to be reasonable and true.
It's a subjective filter, I know. But it's the only one I have.
Boring, perhaps. And unlikely to draw massive numbers of new readers to this blog. But I can live with that.
Actually, I'm very happy with the quantity, and quality, of the visitors to this blog. And those that regularly read this site don't need me to tell them when some wild conspiracy theory is a bunch of nonsense.
I'd be preaching to the choir. And insulting their intelligence at the same time.
If my blog were more widely read, and by mostly laypeople, I might feel differently about this. I might feel more of a duty to refute these rumors.
And I certainly admire those willing to take the time and effort to do so.
I simply haven't the time, energy, or heart to bother.
