P&G worships the devil!!

From Slacktivist, a background to the viral rumor (that I am just hearing of) that a P&G exec went on TV and declared that the company sends a portion of its profits to the Church of Satan. ("False witness") Turns out it was a calculated plot by another soap company to target the evangelical community.

The post analyzes of why people pass on rumors that are obviously false. Malice, or stupidity? After much thought and resistance to the idea, Slacktivist decides on the former:

The dossier/Snopes approach doesn't work because it attempts to apply facts and reason to people who are not interested in either facts or reason. That's not a nice thing to say, or even to think, about anyone else, which is why I was reluctant and slow to reach that conclusion. But that conclusion was inevitable.

In trying to combat the P&G slander with nothing more than irrefutable facts proving it false, I was operating under a set of false assumptions. Among these:

1. I assumed that the people who claimed to believe that Procter & Gamble supported the Church of Satan really did believe such a thing.

2. I assumed that they were passing on this rumor in good faith -- that they were misinforming others only because they had, themselves, been misinformed.

3. I assumed that they would respect, or care about, or at least be willing to consider, the actual facts of the matter.

4. Because the people spreading this rumor claimed to be horrified/angry about its allegations, I assumed that they would be happy/relieved to learn that these allegations were, indisputably, not true.

All of those assumptions proved to be false. All of them. This was at first bewildering, then disappointing, and then, the more I thought about it, appalling -- so appalling that I was reluctant to accept that it could really be the case.

But it is the case.

I kept expecting a comparison to recent political events, but s/he is more restrained than I.