Put your BS detector to the test with this Twitter thread
Put your BS detector to the test with this Twitter thread
Our brains have fairly good BS detectors built in. When we hear or read something that isn’t quite right, it sends out a signal saying “I’m uncertain if this is true”. The trouble is, it doesn’t tell us why the words don’t feel believable. When we get that BS signal, we look at the words or what has been said and, most of us, look logically at what is being claimed. If we can’t see flaws in the logic, we override our BS detector and assume it must be true.
However, the BS detector wasn’t picking up on the logic. It picked up the feelings it got from the words used. With a bit of training, we can look at the words and see why we got that feeling.
It’s the feeling I got when I saw this semi-viral Twitter thread:
Instead of studying the logic, I looked at the words and the way they were used. And I concluded it was indeed BS.
Lets’ break it down
Tweet 1:
Do not read this if you are easily grossed out.
Last night at a party I met a woman who left San Francisco after her dog walker told her the dogs were getting addicted to meth-laced feces.
Apparently they were running around the parks looking for it and then getting high.
She’s in story selling mode here. It’s written more like the opening to a novel than the way that someone will naturally relate an event to you.
After the initial warning line is the first deceptive marker. The first thing you say will be the most important thing you have to say, and in her case it is “Last night at a party”. When this happened (last night) and where it happened (at a party) are irrelevant to the point that is being made. Why have they been added? It’s scene setting, it’s adding detail to make what is to come feel more real and believable.
Next, take a look at the pronouns. “Her dog walker told her the dogs were getting addicted…”. Who’s dogs were getting addicted? The woman at the party’s? The dog walker’s? Some general group of dogs? She doesn’t say, it’s weak. If it had been about a woman leaving San Francisco because “her dog walker told her that HER OWN dogs were getting addicted..” I’d believe this more.
The final line in that tweet begins with “apparently”. If you want to know why that should worry you, read The 8 Words That Liars Use.
Tweet 2:
This woman shared her story to a small crowd, so someone piped in.
"I left San Francisco after my second child got punched by a homeless man wielding a liquor bottle."
The third person in the group said "we left San Francisco after my business got robbed the 15th time."
I see more story selling here. In Tweet 1 she “met” the woman, that felt like it was a personal conversation. Now there were a lot more people present, “a small crowd”. This mismatch of descriptions is another indicator that this isn’t a truthful retelling of events.
One indicator on deception isn’t proof you are being lied to. The more you see, the more likely it is that someone is trying to mislead you.
What do you see in “I left San Francisco after my second child got punched by a homeless man wielding a liquor bottle”?
“Second child” is needless. If you're telling the story of your child being assaulted, would you feel it important to say which order that child came in your family?
If your child were assaulted, would you say it was by a “homeless man” unless you have a particular agenda on homelessness? See also “liquor bottle”. This is picture painting in the extreme.
Tweet 3:
They then turned to me and asked why I left San Francisco.
I still spend a lot of time there, but I have indeed moved to New York.
My answer was not clear, but definitely the problems of the city have been weighing on my spirit.
Living in New York is just easier.
“They then turned to me” is yet more story telling, describing action that doesn’t change the story though detail we don’t need to know.
And why do they ask her that? She doesn’t explain how they knew she had left San Francisco. Look back at the story she tells. One woman says she left San Fransisco due to a story her dog walker had told her, then others in the crowd spontaneously gave their stories, and then they turned to her and asked for hers. Unless the party was for unhappy ex-SF residents, how did they know she had a story? She doesn’t say.
She “was not clear” in the past tense. Your reasons for moving city won’t change, the reason you moved will remain the reason you moved. So to state this in the past tense indicates more deception. Expanding this, it sounds like “the answer I gave was not clear”. Why not? You don’t move cities on a whim. It could be for a job, unhappiness in the city, a better climate - you know the reason.
And she uses the word “just” here - that doesn’t mean all of this is a lie, but it’s another part of The 8 Words That Liars Use.
Tweet 4:
I feel safe in New York to walk alone, at night, essentially everywhere.
I can walk without scanning the sidewalks for glass and trash.
People are so friendly to me -- construction workers often say hi to me when I pass.
The energy is just more positive.
Here she lists numerous positives that she feels about New York. She doesn’t ONCE say that she felt the opposite way in San Francisco. She wants to tell us a story about why San Francisco is a bad place to be, but she doesn’t have the authentic words to say that, so she frames it as ‘New York is better’.
And is it better? Well, there are indicators this is fabricated too. For example, she says she “CAN walk without scanning the sidewalks for glass and trash”, she doesn’t explicitly say she DOES walk without scanning the sidewalks. That’s a weak description.
The line “People are so friendly to me” is a deceptive marker. People is non-specific, often a word used in deception when there is no truthful specific to mention. And people are SO friendly. That’s something else in The 8 Words That Liars Use! Finally, construction workers only “often” say hi to her. That isn’t a ringing endorsement of a city’s friendliness.
Tweet 5:
I miss my family and friends in SF. I miss the cool bay breeze and jaw-dropping views.
But there's a lot I am glad to have left behind.
The business owner who was robbed -- he said his NYC store got robbed recently too.
When NYPD arrived in minutes he cried tears of joy.
The first line is quite straightforward and direct, I believe these are things she misses about San Francisco. Then she says, “there’s a lot I am glad to have left behind”. Once again, she can’t name the bad things about San Francisco, it’s just a generic “a lot”. She doesn’t expand and, once more, her next words are about how New York is better.
And suddenly the “business owner” who had a “business” in San Francisco has one in New York as well. Not impossible, but convenient. However, being robbed in New York doesn’t appear to have gotten him down because the police arrived quickly. When she was relating his San Francisco experience, it was the robberies that were the issue, not the lack of police response.
Tweet 6:
He said he could not believe how fast they came, and that they actually seemed to care.
Apparently SFPD either didn't come, or didn't do anything about his chronic robberies. Even when it was the same person robbing them again and again.
Again, this is incongruent. She acknowledges that SFPD did sometimes come to the robberies, but when they did attend, they didn’t do “anything about” them. She doesn’t tell us if the NYPD did “anything about” that one either, apart from turn up quickly.
Tweet 7:
Almost all my friends have left San Francisco at this point.
Many still there spend most weekends out of the city.
There's a sense that things are in trouble but nobody knows what to expect.
Guess we will find out.
“Almost all my friends have left San Francisco at this point”. Are you sure? Because two tweets ago you said, “I miss my family and friends in SF”, no mention of how few friends there are left.
There’s a familiar theme with “many still there spend most weekends out of the city”. She doesn’t tell us why. If this is a thread to tell us how bad San Francisco is as a city, she doesn’t come up with the goods on why San Francisco is so bad.
She mentions drug addicted dogs (an urban myth), one story of violence (happens everywhere) and someone who is a bit unhappy with police responses (you guessed it, happens everywhere).
She mentions, in weak terms, what she likes about New York but doesn’t say that the opposite applies in San Francisco. Furthermore, she doesn’t say once what she doesn’t like about the city of San Francisco.
Conclusion
There are so many indicators of deception I’ve noted that it is fair to conclude that:
For some reason, she wants to put San Francisco down
She doesn’t have any remembered experience of why San Francisco is bad, which is why she doesn’t express it
She invents people who tell her bad stories about San Francisco to make her sound more believable and part of a bigger group.
Or to put it another way: