It’s Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They’ve Been Fooled

Story Behind The Quote and Poster

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled ” This quote is commonly attributed to author Mark Twain. But there is a debate on this. Snopes.com, our commonly used website to dispel myths, indicates it might not come from Twain at all. Check it out here if you would like to read about their take on this.

Although the term “Mandela Effect” wasn’t coined when people considered Twain the author of the quote, this might be a classic case of this false memory phenomenon. Click on Mandela Effect to get a good explanation of it, if you’ve not heard of it before. Regardless of whether the quote goes back to Mark Twain or not, you have to admit it’s a believable saying. I’m going to – and hopefully not be fooled by doing so – go with the many people who believe the quote does belong to Mark Twain as I continue this post.

When the Fooling Is Close to You

Your parents might have been the first people to fool you. Perhaps it started with Santa Claus. They may have read fairy tales to you and convinced you they were true, believing that you would find the truth as you got older. There are probably all sorts of things they said were the best way to do things – and when you got older you found a better way.

Did your parents or perhaps a teacher ever tell you “Get a good education and you’ll get a good job?” Well, this doesn’t work for everybody. If it didn’t work for you, then you were fooled by this common advice. Yet, you trusted your parents and your teachers back then with many things they told you, because they truly believed that everything they told you was in your best interest Eventually, you found out if they were fooled or not in their thinking when they advised you.

How about your doctor? Your doctor is human and can be fooled into believing things that aren’t true. Has your doctor ever recommended an over the counter decongestant? Recently it turns out they don’t work. Again, someone you trust and believe has been fooled.

Fooling Ourselves Into Getting Better

In the last section it was mentioned that it has been recently found that the main ingredient in over the counter decongestants doesn’t work as previously thought for years. But sometimes things are on the market without Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. For example, dietary supplements and vitamins aren’t approved. Usually if they claim to cure something the FDA weights in on it.

I’m sure you’ve seen commercials on television for products that support brain health and improve memory as we get older. Currently they are not making scientific claims about their product in the ad – in fact, most of their ads are testimonials. These are from people who claim it’s working for them.

The FDA would definitely have a different take on this. There have been several legal challenges on this product going back to 2017.They were forced to change the labelling and marketing from statements such as “clinically proven” and “science proved” to “clinically tested” and “science tested” or other similar language, although many consumers can’t really tell the difference. The general consensus in the medical community is the only ways to improve memory are regular exercise, diet, and intellectual stimulation. Goodrx has a story on this product. So, it’s possible that you can improve your memory to the same degree with a bag of M&M’s.

Another testimonial driven commercial is the one to help us treat back pain with shoe inserts. While inserts may help foot and back pain in some cases, it should be left to podiatrists and other medical professionals who have years of training to determine this and not ordinary folk who say it works.

These inserts can be much more expensive than ones that can be purchased elsewhere for less and work just as well. These stores are popping up all over the country and are we to assume that all the new staff to fill them are well experienced or medical professionals.

Finding people who want to sell you something to cure your ailments is nothing new – been going on for centuries. Just the means of doing it are new: TV, internet, email, YouTube. Check very carefully into these so you don’t become one of the fooled.

Is Shrinkflation Fooling Us?

As a consumer, with inflation on the rise and expenses going up, have you spotted the trickery many manufacturers are doing with our favorite products. I remember in my time buying a pound of ground coffee when it was a pound. Now the container in the grocery store that used to be referred to as a pound is only 10.3 ounces.

My 5 ounce bar of soap is now 3 ounces. And they’re not the only product that looks the same size but have less content in them, so they can be sold at the same price, with hopes the consumer will think it’s the same price for the same amount as before. Laundry soap, cheese, butter are a few examples. They’re trying to convince us that they’re holding prices down – but in reality we’re being sold less. Of course, potato chip bags have been filled with air for ages to fool us into thinking they ‘have more chips than they do, but that’s not shrinkflation – just routine deception. If you’re a regular grocery shopper, you must have noticed these tactics on the shelves. If you shop online and have groceries delivered, you might not have noticed until they arrive and you start using them.

Somewhat Controversial Fooling

I’ll note a few subjects here that are basically two sided and the individuals on one side are probably being fooled. You can decide yourself. Global warming is the first one to come to mind. Can there be gray areas on this topic? Perhaps, but most spokespeople take one side or the other. According to NASA most climate scientists lean towards it existing.

Did we all go overboard on how we dealt with the pandemic. Were there too many rules and restrictions? Some people say yes – but the CDC would disagree with them. This debate also includes whether or not children were kept out of school way too long?

How about those who believe that the moon landing was faked or the earth is flat. At this time I’m not choosing sides and defending one side or the other. I’m just stating that with all of these matters there are individuals somehow being fooled and, according to the quote we’re discussing, they would be hard to convince otherwise.

Good Luck Changing Opinions On These Matters

Earlier we discussed some instances where folks could be fooled, but it wouldn’t take a long before they realized it. Possibly someone would purchase something that didn’t live up to the advertisement. Or they would conceivably get older and grow out of their beliefs. Maybe a long time general medical principle is proven wrong. However, some philosophies are so ingrained that they might stay with a person for a lifetime.

What are we always warned not to discuss at big family get-togethers? That’s right – politics or religion are the points to avoid. Yet there’s a lot of fooling going on here.

Quite a few of us as of lately have been treating politics almost as if it were tribal. You’re a member of one tribe or the other. There used to be moderates and there was compromise – it’s beginning to look like these are just memories now.
But there are more than two political parties and usually more than just two views on many given talking points. So, you might be outnumbered on your viewpoint regardless of your party affiliation. Who is being fooled here? Someone must be and you’re not going to change minds.

Finally, I’m going to suggest you check out this article on Wikipedia It uses statistics from PEW Research Center from 2010. What it suggests is that, while Christianity is the largest religion at almost 2.4 billion of the worlds almost 8 billion people, it’s only at 31%. Islam, which some predict will overtake Christianity in numbers by midcentury, is 2nd at 1.16 billion people and almost 25%. Hinduism is 3rd at about 15% of the population. All other religions of the world are much smaller in numbers – again, check the article I’ve linked to.

What does all this mean? Well it means that no matter what religion you follow and believe in – you’re outnumbered. More people believe in something else for their faith.. Are you and you’re religion correct and all others are being fooled? Yeah, try and convince them.

Oh, one last category I haven’t mentioned yet from the article at Wikipedia (and some may say that I’m being fooled by using their statistics). This group numbers about 1.19 billion people and about 15.6% of the worlds population. They are the secular/nonreligious/agnostic/and atheist. These are individuals who believe that members of all religions are being fooled!

Fooled By Another Good Quote

One of my favorite quotes for many years has a debatable source, as does the one at the top of this article, and goes as follows: “There are two sides to every story, and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.” I believed in this saying for a long time after I first heard it in the 1970’s. Interesting axiom – but it doesn’t take into consideration that both sides can be wrong.

Love to hear any opinions you have on all of this – please leave a comment below.

The Poster Information

This article’s poster is not one of the more complicated ones to assemble, but the details and subject are still very interesting. Since one of the reasons you’re here is to find out how the poster came to be – let’s go,

So, I wanted the quote on the poster to look like it came from an old typewriter – for those of us who remember what a typewriter was. My designing program for this poster was Kittl and it includes a font called X typewriter. Seemed exactly what I was looking for. Perhaps, if Mark Twain actually authored the quote, it was originally pecked out on an old typewriter. Or maybe it was a new typewriter in his day.

I gave the poster a yellow background and typed the words with a 130 font size. Then I searched for a background picture of a lot of people.

I found what I was looking for on Pixabay that was “Free for use under the Pixabay Content License”. It was taken by Alexander Lesnitsky from Moscow, Russia. If you check here you can see the original picture, read about the photographer, and see what Pixabay’s content license is all about.

After adding the picture I vectorized it to 8 colors and brought the opacity down to 50%. This let some of the yellow underneath the picture bleed through to give it a brownish tint almost sepia. The vectorizing blurred it a little and gave it a look like it was painted.

Have you checked out my featured posters?
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