In 1959 a kooky character called “G. Clifford Prout” appeared on the Today Show to launch his “Clothe the Animals” campaign (https://priceonomics.com/the-hoaxster-who-revealed-sad-truths-about-america/).
It was a hoax engineered by an inveterate hoaxster, Alan Abel. Nevertheless, some 50,000 Americans signed up to support his phony campaign.
What does that tell us about our national credulity quotient? Or did a lot of those people sign up just to be part of the gag?
At any rate, we had some laughs about it on the playground.
I’m afraid our populace has grown a bit more daft since then.
Much more daft, actually. Seems that nobody is even concerned about truth, wisdom or common sense today; just drama.
Alan Abel saw the vacuousness of popular culture long before most people ever even though about the possibility that all of this could be a house of cards. Good going.
Even after he admitted the hoax, some people still took it seriously.
P.S.–I suspect popular culture, anybody’s popular culture, is always vacuous.
It speaks in depth about the problem, when people refuse to let go of a hoax. People control what they believe in, and many times they base their beliefs upon their wishes.