Broken Telephone

For those who are not familiar, broken telephone, also called Chinese Whispers¹, is a game in which one person whispers a message to another and the message gets passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group.

Errors typically accumulate in the retellings so that the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from the one uttered by the first.

It's human nature; we're imperfect. But there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's what makes us beautiful. It's why we invent and play games like broken telephone.

But now everyone--you and me included--is playing a very grown-up game of broken telephone. And we play it every day. In this adult version of the game, the whispers can be dangerous and the game is much bigger.

We can whisper something to anyone anywhere on the planet and they can then whisper that message to someone else, anywhere else on the planet.

By participating in the social web and using modern communication tools--cell phones, text messages, social media platforms--we're all participating in a global game of broken telephone, transmitting messages from one person to the next at the speed of light.

But what happens to our message as it gets transmitted? What happens when we retell something we've heard and then people start whispering our version of the story to others around the web, emailing it, tweeting it, and texting it?

What makes this adult version of of the game dangerous?

To find out, let's first start with a little history.

How Disinformation Killed my Grandfather

Cigarettes are a classic example of how false information can be dangerous. Many of us can relate to this particular example because it happened recently enough in history that our parents (or ourselves, if we're old enough) had first-hand experience with mass-exposure to false information that was propagated for financial gain.

There was a time when cigarettes were advertised as being good and healthy for you, a time when doctors would come on to the television and tell you what brand of cigarettes they smoked.

There was a time in very recent history when doctors would tell you that cigarettes were perfectly safe, even for moms and babies.

Today that just sounds ignorant and stupid.

But why? Why does that sound ignorant and stupid now? What makes us so much different than the people living fifty years ago? What reason did those people have to question the doctors? What reason did they have to doubt the people who appeared to know more than they did?

That's just it. They didn't have any good reason to doubt them.

The difference between fifty years ago and today is that now so many of us know the truth. Now so many of us have heard stories or have family members, as I do, who have died of cigarette-related diseases.

Now the truth about cigarettes is louder than any amount of false information and now even the people who continue to smoke cigarettes accept the reality of that truth.

How History is Repeating Itself

In 1953, members of the tobacco industry hired the firm Hill & Knowlton to help counteract findings that suggested cigarette smoking led to lung cancer.²

Just think about that: the tobacco industry was openly and legally paying a business to spread false information that would guarantee more sales of cigarettes to people would later die from lung cancer, like my grandfather did when I was growing up.

But that's all behind us now, right? We live in a more informed and more civilized society and the truth is everywhere, right? With all that we know, we couldn't possibly let stuff like that happen again, right?

Wrong.

In 2009, members of ANGA (America's Natural Gas Alliance), a lobbying organization for the gas industry, spread $80 million in funds across several agencies, including Hill & Knowlton (yes, the same firm hired to spread false information about cigarettes in the 50s), to try and influence decisions on the process of gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing.³

But here's what we know: Gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing (also known as 'fracking') release toxins into the local water supply that have known adverse health effects. These include neurological, pulmonary, gastroenterological, dermatological, immunological, hematological, endocrinological, reproductive, and genetic illnesses and abnormalities.⁴

I can't even pronounce all of those, but I bet they're not good for me.

Environment-related cancers can take 15 to 30 years to develop, so many of the negative side-effects won't even be seen until it's too late, just like the negative side-effects for cigarettes.

But you have nothing to worry about, right? You don't hear much about fracking so it probably won't effect you, right?

If you think you're safe, check Fracking Across the United States to see if your water supply (which comes from all directions) may be tainted and slowly killing you and your family (and certainly poisoning the water supply for future generations).

(By the way, it has also been found that Hill & Knowlton employees modify Wikipedia articles, so beware of the links I reference in this essay.)

Companies with a financial interest in spreading false information are still paying big money to ensure that such information remains the status quo and they'll continue doing so as long as it's more profitable than allowing the truth to become the norm.

Blatant lies by 'industry experts' who are paid to say what they're told to say? Lies and false information being openly touted as truth? It's still happening today. And with the Internet and social media, it's happening faster than ever.

And we might be helping.

Whispering to Millions at the Speed of Light

Lies outpace the truth whenever those lies have more backing them than the truth. Today, in a world driven largely by financial interest, there is a lot of money supporting false information.

The people in charge of spreading that false information (who may not even be aware the information they're tasked with spreading is false) recognize that you are their greatest asset. They recognize that you are their greatest communication tool.

What do we know about spreading information (false or otherwise) to large groups of people? We know that sensationalism is king, that if something is shocking, or affects us emotionally in some way, we're far more likely to share it with others.

We are incredibly emotional creatures. We release emotion by expressing and sharing it with whoever will listen. If we're not careful, what we share can stray from the truth. This is most likely to happen with things that make us angry or upset.

Take for example the recent news that two US Marine Harrier jets dropped bombs onto the heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

On Twitter, two of the people I'm following, Ross Hill and Anne Wu, tweeted a link to the news article along with their own sub-140-character summary (i.e., a whisper in the global game of broken telephone):

Ross Hill tweeted, "USA actually bombed Australia's Great Barrier Reef this week" and Anne Wu said, "the coral reefs are dying yet the US is still bombing them."

In both cases, it sounds pretty bad, right? It makes you angry that the worlds largest military is doing something as blatantly stupid as dropping bombs on a harmless reef in the ocean. Damn the military!

But hold on. Let's check our facts, shall we?

If you read the article, you'll discover that what actually happened was a training mishap:

US Navy Commander William Marks, of the 7th Fleet Public Affairs, said the jets had planned to drop the bombs on a range on Townshend Island, but that was foiled when the range was not clear.

After several attempts, the jets were running low on fuel and could not land with the bombs they were carrying.

So they dropped the bombs because it would've been too dangerous to land on the aircraft carrier with the bombs still attached. OK, that's understandable. But the bombs exploded in the ocean and destroyed precious coral reef, right?

He said each bomb was jettisoned in a "safe, unarmed state and did not explode".

OK, so nobody "actually bombed" anything and nobody "is still bombing them". There was no explosion and it's unlikely that any reef was harmed at all.

Sure, leaving the bombs in the ocean will certainly be harmful to sea life, as they would corrode and leak harmful chemicals into the ocean over time. But the military is not doing anything about that either, right?

The US Navy is considering how to recover the bombs, which were dropped in a "deep channel" about 16 nautical miles south of Bell Cay, off the Capricorn Coast between Mackay and Rockhampton.

[...]

"The safety of personnel and the environment are our top priorities," Commander Marks said.

I'm not picking on Ross or Anne here at all. I just happened to see their tweets and I just happened to click through to the article to read what actually happened. (It seemed too unbelievable to me that the bombing was intentional.)

Their tweets led me to these thoughts on disinformation and helped me link the old game of broken telephone with something that's happening daily in modern adult life. They helped me recognize just how easy it is to spread false or misleading information when the message we're sharing is something sensational.

What led me to take this whole thing more seriously and write this essay was what happened next.

A few days after I saw Ross and Anne's tweets, I happened to see that the WikiLeaks Twitter account had also tweeted about this 'bombing' incident:

The WikiLeaks tweet reads, "US fighter jets bomb Australia's great barrier reef."

The BBC article, linked in WikiLeaks tweet, is different than the one that Ross and Anne shared, so I thought that maybe some new information had surfaced that proved the military was intentionally bombing the reef (WikiLeaks is, after all, known for leaking information).

Let's read and find out. The BBC article is short; it's only three paragraphs. Here's the second paragraph:

The two planes jettisoned four bombs in more than 50m (165 ft) of water, away from coral, to minimise damage to the World Heritage Site, the US navy said.

It's almost laughable how accurately the opposite message is being conveyed by a simple tweet. Except it's not laughable, because the WikiLeaks Twitter account has 1.9 million followers and 185 people retweeted that misleading message.

If each of those people who retweeted the message only had 100 followers (which is likely far below the real average), that's an additional 18,500 people who saw WikiLeak's tweet just from those retweets, an additional 18,500 people who heard a whisper because 185 people thought the message was worthy of sharing, a message that was quite different from the truth.

The article linked in the tweet by WikiLeaks had three paragraphs, a grand total of 74 words. How many of those 185 people who retweeted and shared the WikiLeaks message actually clicked on the link and verified the facts for themselves?

I'm sure neither Ross or Anne meant any harm by their tweets and I doubt that any of the 185 people who retweeted WikiLeaks meant any harm either. I also doubt any real harm was caused (the military can probably handle a little criticism).

However, Ross has 5,679 Twitter followers and Anne has 717; that's potentially 6,396 ears they whispered their misleading messages into. That's not even mentioning the 1.9 million WikiLeaks followers or the exponential effect of the people who retweeted WikiLeaks.

Whether any harm was done in this particular case is beyond the point. The point is that we're all participating in a global game of broken telephone and that we're all, myself included, responsible for what we share.

We need to be more careful.

Share Responsibly or Don't Share at All

What if the Internet was around when cigarettes were being marketed as 'good for you'? How many funny or sensational tweets containing cigarette-promoting ideas would've been retweeted, unknowingly contributing to the future death of millions?

We are the media now and that makes each one of us a media transmitters. Messages spread with our help. If someone in a game of broken telephone refused to pass along a message until they were certain they had it right, the truth would have a greater chance at survival.

Only we can stop the perpetuation of fabricated information. Unless we all start accepting this responsibility we risk assisting those who are pushing misinformation for their own agenda.

If you're going to share something, please, check the facts.

Recognize the power you hold in your hands as you communicate and share online. Recognize that when you share things today you can reach billions of people, not just those in your immediate vicinity or those who you know, but people all over the planet.

When in doubt, do what I do and leave it out. It's far better to share silence than to risk sharing false messages that could harm people.

If you don't know the facts, share questions instead of sensational assumptions. My dad always used to say, "when you assume, you make an 'Ass' out of 'U' and 'Me'."

Assume nothing. Reject sensational attention-seeking. The truth will always be more durable and long-lasting than hollow sensationalism.

Share the truth. Fix the broken telephone.

The Park of Skeletons and Giant Trees

There’s a park here in Hobart that I’ve walked through maybe a dozen times since arriving in Tasmania a few weeks ago. It’s a beautiful park with manicured gardens and strips of black pavement that crisscross bright green grass that always seems to be freshly cut.

But there’s also something quirky about this park. Stone structures that look like giant gravestones are occasionally thrown about and there are different types of trees growing in seemingly random locations.

I walked through the park today and stopped to read a small metal placard that was embedded into a stone at the base of one of the smaller trees. It said the tree was planted in 1932. That’s eighty years. I put my hand on the tree and looked up at it with a new sense of respect and admiration. Eighty years old and still young and strong.

I continued my walk and looked around at the other elderly giants surrounding me. Some of these trees must be hundreds of years old.

The park is a common route used by both commuters and students traveling to and from work and school. My host, who often walks through the park on her way to and from work, mentioned to me once that it would be a fun project to take photos of the trees while looking up at the sky from underneath them, and then trying to identify where in the park each photo was taken.

I find myself always looking up when I pass through a park now.

Perspective has a strange way of changing how we think about the most obvious things, those things that we take for granted and pass over, or under, without thought or pause for reflection.

At the other end of the park I came across a sign with more information and some historical background about the area. In 1804, the park began as Tasmania’s first cemetery, but became badly neglected within a few years and fell apart. Escaped convicts would occasionally vandalize the graves and sometimes they would even climb into coffins to hide from pursuing police.

The city of Hobart continued to grow and expand around the cemetery and before it was turned into a recreation area in 1925, nearly 900 people had been buried there. A few of the prominent gravestones were repaired and now they share the landscape with several giant trees, including American Redwood, Elm, Spruce, and Tasmania’s native, and giant, Blue Gum tree.

Nine hundred people. I tried to imagine that number of skeletons resting underneath the beautiful green grass, the roots of these giant trees weaving in and out of them, slowly converting what was once a living breathing human back into the basic elements. I’ll never walk through St. David’s park the same way again, as my perspective has been permanently shifted by the few words on that deteriorating sign.

It doesn’t take much to alter our view of the world, to shift our reality in such a great way that what we see and feel changes so dramatically that we become a different person, making different choices and thinking different thoughts. But a change in our perspective always starts with present-minded observation, with understanding where we are right now in relation to something else.

I walked though that park many times, but it wasn’t until I slowed down to understand and observe my surroundings that I acquired a new perspective and a new appreciation for the park.

In the same way, unless I remain curious and present to the activities in my day-to-day life, I may end up walking through unaware and oblivious to the great depth and richness that exists all around me and within my life.

Tasmanian Street Musicians

Yesterday I walked to the Salamanca Market in Hobart, Tasmania, a street market that opens every Saturday. Much like everything else I’ve experienced here in Tasmania, the market had ‘calmly dramatic’ feel to it, filled with three hundred stalls and bustling with thousands of people, yet not feeling one bit chaotic or rushed.

There were lots of street musicians strewn about. There was a teenage girl on the flute, a young man singing to an acoustic guitar, an older gentleman attempting to play the ukulele, and another selling CDs.

After walking around a bit, I noticed the young man with the acoustic guitar had joined another young musician. The two men, who did not seem to know each other, started playing as one, carefully watching each other as they tried to find a rhythm.

A few of these musicians seemed comfortable performing, but there were many others who made it obvious they were struggling with stage-fright. I remember seeing a young man sitting on a bench through one of the stalls, set back away from the crowds as he quietly sang to himself and tapped on his guitar. I wondered what he was thinking.

At one end of the market there was a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven, holding a violin and glancing around nervously. She found the courage to start playing just I walked past her and several people turned as they heard the music, their faces going from curious to astonished when they saw her age.

Walking down Kennedy Lane, into Salamanca Square where families gathered to relax around a water fountain, there was a young boy band playing. One boy on the drums, one on the keyboard, and two more standing up with guitars. The lead singer wasn’t more than eight, his flushed red face and closed eyes telling me he didn’t want to see all the people stopping to smile at him. His singing was horribly off pitch, but his soul made that irrelevant.

Down the other end of Kennedy Lane, down the quiet narrow end with tall stone walls on either side blocking the already diffused sunlight, there was another musician standing in the shadows. I recognized him immediately from my walks around the city earlier in the week. But I had never seen his face. Or was it a girl? I couldn’t tell. He wore a expressionless white mask, baggy jeans, and a faded blue sweatshirt with the hood pulled over. The only thing more unsettling than his ghostly appearance was the tune that he added to the scene. Picking gently at a closely clutched guitar, he played with the sound of each string ever so carefully, clearly having more experience than a casual passerby would notice. Perhaps that’s why he wore an expressionless white mask.

I walked around the market a few more times, not really knowing where I was going or what I was looking for. Around the middle of the market, at the end of a closed street, there were two men playing music and generating a crowd. Not being much for crowds myself, I stepped off to the side, a bit behind the musicians. There I noticed several guys in black suits sitting on the ground, with bags of wires and instruments and other musical equipment sitting on the street around them. As they laughed and watched the crowd, I realized they were next in line, awaiting their turn in the spotlight.

It was here, facing in the same direction as the musicians, that I noticed a man in the crowd step up and throw some money into a guitar case. He smiled and stepped back into the crowd to continue watching. There was something about his posture that told me he was standing there simply to encourage others to step up and give. Not many did.

Every single one of the musicians I had walked by, from the young girl playing the violin, to the person picking at the guitar in a white mask, had a bucket or instrument case in front of them collecting donations. But I hadn’t given anything.

As I ate breakfast this morning, I reflected on all the musicians I walked by and I felt bad for not giving anything, especially not to the children. I realized that even if I had given money to every single one of the musicians, it wouldn’t have amounted to more than a few dollars.

But how much hope and validation might I have given in the process? What if my giving something meant that one of those children felt inspired to see their dreams through? How could any amount of money be valued higher than that possibility?

Perhaps the problem lies in my relationship to money. Perhaps deep down inside there is still a lot of insecurity and scarcity that I’m not recognizing, a part of me that is reluctant to give because I’ve spent so much of my life living in fear of not having enough.

I do have enough. In fact, I have more than enough.

Next week I’m going back to the Salamanca Market. I’m going to give something to every musician that I can find. In fact, maybe I should make this a permanent habit, to always give something to street musicians. Unlike beggars, they’re clearly offering something in return. Instead of just asking, they’re creating something and hoping that you’ll find value in it.

But more likely than not, they’re also asking for you to support their dream, to show them that it’s a dream worth working towards.

All dreams are worth working towards and I believe there is no better way to invest in others than to help them achieve those dreams. What’s your dream and how are you working towards it? Let me know and I will send you something. (Please include your PayPal email address.)

A Writers Manifesto

I, am a writer, and this, is my manifesto.

I write to explore and I publish to share.

I write to develop an intimate relationship with my mind, to make sense of that which doesn’t, and to explore the intangible in a tangible form.

Writing creates a conduit, a channel that guides and gives focus to an otherwise chaotic spillway of thoughts. I seek to understand, but to understand I must first learn. To learn, I must first listen. To listen, I must first empty.

A mind which is not empty has no room to listen.

I respect the power of language because I am a craftsman of words. I build cathedrals of letters and paint cities with vibrations.

I am always striving to improve my craft. I treat it with care, because my craft holds magic. I do not rush, because here, there be dragons.

I honor those who have come before me, but I recognize that we all drink from the same potent river of timeless wisdom, a place from which all writers quote.

I publish to share my creations, to give life to the lifeless and wings to the wingless. I release only the most flightworthy of work because I take pride in fine craftsmanship.

I know that my perspective adds value to the life of my reader. I know that others read with anticipation because, as I’ve learned firsthand, finding someone who sees the world through our eyes gives validation to our very existence.

I share my work to set it free and to amplify its potential to change the world.

I, am a craftsman of words, and this, is my manifesto.

I write to explore and to understand the intangible.

I publish to share and inspire freedom.