Misleading Facts and the Power of a Name

Misleading Facts and the Power of a Name

Alright again I am not really going to be doing much of a rant but more of just writing. Some people seem to like this style of writing while some people think it really doesn’t feel the same. I can write in very different ways and when I feel like doing another one of my rants where I just go all out then I will do it.

People will do whatever they can in order to try to get their points across. They are willing to do whatever they can and a lot of them will tell you that what they say is fact. When they say what they say is true they are telling the truth, however they will also bring up facts that are irrelevant or negate certain other facts. In this situation they are not technically lying, but they are still misleading in their convictions.

There are several examples of this situation. There are a ton of rapists in the world and if you asked 10 of them if they masturbated before they raped someone they would all say yes. So to someone who is trying to stop someone from masturbating and trying to give the impression it is bad they could say that 10 out of 10 rapists said they masturbated first before they raped someone. So does that means that if you masturbate you are going to become a rapist? It doesn’t mean that at all but people will want you to believe it. If this were true then just about every person on earth would be a rapist.

Maybe that example seemed a little bit too farfetched for you, so I’ll give an example of something that people here about more often: “If you smoke marijuana, you’ll start doing other drugs.” Now let’s look at the facts here, people who are using cocaine, heroin, LSC, or most other drugs have stated that they started off by doing marijuana. Now to someone who is trying to convince you that pot is a gateway drug, that’s where they will stop in delivering their facts. They fail to mention that out of all the people who do pot most of them DO NOT end up trying other drugs. Also lets not forget that pot is the easiest drugs to get, so somebody who is thinking about experimenting with drugs and wants to try all kinds of stuff is going to end up trying pot first because it is the most accessible. Now they already got it in their minds that they want to try out new drugs, it’s not like they are trying pot for the first time and after they smoke it they are like “damn that weed was good, but now I want to try some crack.”

Allow for me to give another example of this situation. The other night I was watching TV and I stumbled across an infomercial saying how you can make money buying foreclosed homes. They mention things like how you can get them cheap and below market value, but they fail to realize important things. When you buy a foreclosed home you are buying blind because the bank isn’t going to let you look in the inside of that house and do you really expect the people who are getting kicked out of their house to let you take a look? Also don’t forget that when houses are foreclosed it’s not like someone comes to the house one day and tells the people to get out and it’s all settled in a day with someone making sure the people don’t damage the house. Foreclosure proceedings will last at least 3 months. In 3 months you can do a lot to damage a house and someone could just go and take a chainsaw to it. Another thing about foreclosures is the price is only about 5%-10%, on average, less then what the market value is. Someone who is trying to sell the fact that buying foreclosed houses will tell you that you can get a house at 40%-50% less then the market value. Now this isn’t a lie because you will only pay about 5%-10%, on average, less then what the market value is. The key phrase there is “on average” which means that there are houses that could end up going that cheap, however it is highly rare. One more thing is that even if you did get the house for less then what the market value is, the house could be damaged so bad that you may end up spending so much money to fix or even rebuild the house that you end up spending more money then what the market value for that house was. This section actually turned into a little part by itself, but I’ll go on.

I was going to make this a one topic writing, but now I feel like writing about something me and one of my friends briefly discussed. Someone I know today bought a video game and didn’t even play it. The only reason he even bought this game in the first place was because it was Final Fantasy. Even though he may not even like this series he still bought it because of the Final Fantasy name and the history that it has. A name is a huge part of marketing and how we look at things and it’s not just in games. If you blindly went to someone and told them, ok you can have a Mercedes or a Ford, which one do you want? Now without even knowing what exactly their choices are most people are going to pick Mercedes because of the name and what it represents.

A few months ago some movie about a singer came out and it was supposedly a parody on the Johnny Cash movie. This movie had some actor I didn’t care about so I had no desire to want to see the movie. If this movie had put Will Ferrell in there then I would have wanted to see it and that’s another example of a name. Will Ferrell has a representation as being a funny guy so even if a movie looks like it won’t be funny at all, if he is in it then it’s going to spark people’s interest a little more.

This goes with advertising as well. If you own a bar and are like “we sell Boston Brewed Harpoon Ale” most people are not going to know what the hell you are talking about. If you are like “we sell Boston Brewed Samuel Adams” then people will know what you are talking about and would be more inclined to come to your bar. You also don’t see electronics stores advertise that they sell Vizio, Magnavox, and Sylvania. So they are going to advertise that they sell Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung. This is because the name sells and gets people interested in what they have.

Alright I am going to end it with that. I may have gone a little too far with the examples but I think they got my point across. Anyways have a nice weekend and don’t start smoking crack. I mean unless you want to smoke crack, but don’t say I told you to do it.