But it was only a FAKE shark I jumped!
There were ominous tidings in my Twitter stream yesterday…
@Lawlerpalooza You jumped the shark with today’s episode on smartdrugsmarts. Not sure if I can trust your podcast when you do woo woo science
He was right to be upset.
My podcast, published yesterday, was bullshit of the worst sort.
It featured actors passing themselves off as legitimate authorities — in one case, as a reputable surgeon stacked with Oxford credentials. They talked about a revolutionary miracle cure that was total, unadulterated baloney.
My listener was right to call me out. In fact, his tweet was not half as bad as I deserved.
Except that yesterday was April Fools’ Day.
“Jumping the Shark”: An idiom describing the moment when a TV show or other series begins to decline in quality. The phrase is based on a scene from the sitcom “Happy Days,” when the character Fonzie jumps over a shark on water-skis.
When (and how) is it okay to bullshit people?
This is a question devoid of easy answers. It may place right up there with “What is consciousness?” and “Why is there a universe in the first place?”
We all know that lying is wrong…
But we also all know that there’s loopholes to this general rule. One loophole is for things that are funny. And that loophole gets wider the funnier those things are.
This rationalization is garden variety utilitarianism. (At least, I think it is— I’d need to consult a real philosopher to confirm this.) But things get dicey when a guy like me has to guess how funny something will be for all involved.
Ask any comedian and you’ll get confirmation: Jokes bomb sometimes.
You never know if what seems funny in your head is going to be funny for the next guy. Or a roomful of next guys. Or an Internet audience full of thousands of next guys.
Until you present the joke, that is.
Drum roll please…
Lie to me — but maybe only sometimes.
I’m a sucker for a prank.
Different folks gravitate towards different styles of humor.
Personally, I’m underwhelmed by fart jokes. But I can’t get enough of pies-in-the-face and the sort of humor that combines playfulness and audacity. I think the guy who did the fake sign-language eulogy for Nelson Mandela should win some sort of Nobel Prize for Humor.
But that’s just me. Whether or not my podcast’s listeners (or a reasonable percentage of them) will agree with what I think is funny is anyone’s guess.
You just can’t know in advance. And you can’t ask, either. The whole point of tricking someone requires that they don’t know a trick is coming.
My show is about how to get smarter — using the latest techniques from neuroscience, applied to your very own brain. It’s a subject where credibility is a cardinal virtue.
Putting out bad data has consequences that range from wasting someone’s time and money (e.g. they buy a supplement or a gizmo that doesn’t work) to actually hurting someone (we’re talking about applied neuroscience — do you have a spare brain?).
The First Big Science Prank I Can Remember: Discover Magazine, circa 1995 — a brilliant hoax about “naked ice borers.”
When my audience tunes in, they’re trusting what they hear to be as true as the current state of biomedical research allows. Which actually means they that will hear some amazing claims…
- Nicotine, minus the tobacco, has actually got a lot going for it.
- Somewhere, right now, unlicensed macaque monkeys are driving electric wheelchairs using only their brain waves (motivated by fresh grapes).
- There is a natural, reliable mood-enhancer that has been used safely for over two millenia and tastes good in tea.
Damn if we aren’t rooting for all of this stuff to be true.
Who wouldn’t like to live in a candy-colored near future with Alzheimer’s eradicated, depression biochemically inverted and your average 3rd grader smart enough to beat today’s Jeopardy winners without straining their cute li’l neurons?
But while everyone would like to be an optimist, no one wants to think that they’re fooling themselves. And so the dirtiest word in my audience’s entire lexicon is…
(I shudder as I type this…)
Woo-woo.
Okay, so maybe that’s two words.
Or maybe not?
“Woo-woo,” like the dubious practices that it denotes, defies strict verification even in attributes as basic as proper spelling. And this is appropriate. If woo-woo were the unmistakeable bullshit we suspect it is, then we would just call it bullshit.
Instead, woo-woo hangs on by a ligament of non-falsifiability, of supportive anecdotes, or a lack of persuasively-damning test data — allowing it to stave off universal condemnation and harbor a hopeful band of credulous devotees. Woo-woo is the purgatory where silliness waits before being cast into the hellfire of Total Bullshit.
My April Fools’ joke was a podcast episode featuring the best/worst sort of woo-woo pseudoscience: an interview with a (fake) doctor who could perform a “chakra transplant.” (Chakras are mystic energy-balls located like prayer beads up and down the human spine. I can’t prove that you don’t have them, but you can’t prove that you do; classic woo-woo.)
Fun Fact: Within three hours of posting the episode, we ranked #2 in Google for “chakra transplant.” I was both elated at Google’s speed and bemused that I wasn’t the first person to make up the idea of transplanting a chakra.
I couldn’t claim surprise when some people were pissed.
From another listener:
“To say that a podcast that I admire and enjoy has now decided to dive into the world of complete unscientific witchcraft is disappointing…. Well let’s say I had to read the description 3 times and still didn’t believe it.”
Nerves of Steel, or Brain of Cinderblock?
Within the office, we knew that we’d alienate some people, who wouldn’t get the joke… But it was a calculated risk. We hoped the people who thought it was funny would outnumber those who would be turned off and never come back.
At least part of the gamble seems to have worked: We did get a lot of downloads. April 1st was our single biggest download-day in the past month, overshadowing its closest rival by about 50%.
But more ominously, I remain a believer in Richard Nixon’s idea of a “great, silent majority.” For every hoodwinked listener who was disgusted enough to email me his contempt (all of whom responded well to my “April Fools’!” reply) I fear there were 99 others who left silently out the back door, without leaving a digital Dear John note.
Of course, I won’t know for sure until I see the downloads for next week’s show. But whatever their number, I mourn the listener-relationships I had to sacrifice on the altar of humor. But it’s only once per year the calendar grants us a “Get Out of Bullshit Free” card. I really had no choice.
At the same time, I get nervous thinking ahead to next year — and just how far I’ll have to go to pull off an April Fools’ prank now that everybody knows what a reprobate I am.
From Twitter, 18 hours later:
@Lawlerpalooza LOL love your podcast. You got me. Keep up the good work.
