... the Moon landing hoax was filmed on an asteroid!".
Enter the Hoaxfest 2023 and win cash and prizes for the most believed hoax. Entries write their hoax on the site and propagate it through all sorts of social media. Scoring is kept by how many buy into it.
The positive effect is that when they receive their reward, it'll be big news and people who believed it might learn a lesson about believing everything they hear. Plus it'd be entertaining.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 17 2022 The Conspiracy Theory Contest is itself a hoax! Every time you submit a hoax to the contest, or promote the contest in any way, you are giving hackers access to your bank account and DNA, and every "like" tortures and kills a randomly selected puppy or kitten!-- pocmloc, Dec 17 2022 That would be a great way to start the show.
"Sorry, Hoaxfest 2023 is a hoax. YOU'VE BEEN PRANKED! SUCKAA! (entry fee not refundable)"-- doctorremulac3, Dec 17 2022 OK so getting all the audience and the entrants and the celebrity prizegivers and the sponsors and the TV cameras to all come to the fake award ceremony would be a brilliant hoax, and would guarantee a win. Trouble is everyone else would cop on that this was the winning formula and so come award date there would be thousands of "official 100% not hoax" ceremonies and no-one would know which one was the official one. I guess in that case the one that drew the biggest crowds would be the winner, unless by some chance that was actually the real one, in which case the next biggest attendance one would win.-- pocmloc, Dec 17 2022 Plastic food packaging was chosen deliberately by 1960s industrialists who knew it has estrogens and knew it would get into the food and water. They mistakenly believed more estrogen reduces violence.-- Voice, Dec 17 2022 I like that. Here's the slogan for Hoaxfest Entertainment LLC. "Don't believe us? Good."-- doctorremulac3, Dec 17 2022 Conspiracy theories are an entire literature genre, some of them indeed deserve some kind of award. Can't wait to submit my own (can't tell you what is about, I'm being spied right now) [+]-- piluso, Dec 17 2022 I know you are.
What's that? Oh, sorry, my deputy director of intel told my not to say that. Disregard.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 17 2022 For some reason it is constantly being reported that this contest started here.-- pashute, Dec 18 2022 No, [pashute], that's just a horrible misinformation campaign. If you look at the Truth and Evidence you'll clearly see that this idea here is a shameless plagiarism of my older original idea called "Hoax Contest" which I posted a few weeks back. See link for the original idea with its numerous celebratory annotations and press coverage etc.-- pocmloc, Dec 18 2022 Well this just proves my point. I posted the link as evidence and it was instantly deleted. Shame on you [Dr. R] for supressing the TRUTH and promoting this FAKE NEWS. Shame on you. The TRUTH will come out in the end and then you will be sorry.-- pocmloc, Dec 18 2022 I didn't take it down, it was that other guy. Same guy hiding the microfilm of the aliens at Area 51.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 18 2022 There's a saying among conspiracy theorists that the actual grand prize for good investigative journalism is being silenced by the powers that be. Sounds a bit paranoid if you ask me.-- sninctown, Dec 20 2022 I'm concerned this would backfire and result in a flood of new conspiracy theories. People wouldn't learn any lessons from this. The catch of a good conspiracy theory is precisely that it isn't true, so proving it's not true has no effect other than to amplify the calls of "that's what they want you to think".
Conspiracy theories are bad and I believe have contributed to a massive lowering of our collective intelligence. People have always been stupid, but providing more opportunities to be stupid can't be the answer.-- tatterdemalion, Dec 20 2022 Well the idea, good or bad is that the people believing the conspiracy theory would be shown how it was created, that it's not real and be like the Santa Claus lesson parents give their kids, "Don't believe everything you hear."
Critical thinking is important, might be one way to teach it. Would everybody get the lesson? Maybe not, but some probably would.
However there is the one human trait of never admitting when we're wrong. That might certainly kick in.
Be interesting to try it on a small scale. Not sure how you'd do that. Pick one college campus maybe and try it out there?
There was something kind of sort of similar they did in elementary school. Kids were all given a long list of instructions for steps to do to complete the test. Stuff like standing up, rubbing your tummy, waving your hands in the air etc. The last instruction was "Now just sit down and don't do any of the previous things on the list, this was a lesson about reading all the instructions before proceeding." So all the kids that read everything first just got to sit there and laugh at the kids who were acting like clowns.
The lesson I took from it was to never trust teachers and don't follow their instructions.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 20 2022 That's exactly what they wanted you to do...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 21 2022 random, halfbakery