Lies. Dirty Rotten Flighty Lies.

So the Boston Red Sox are playing the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays in the playoffs. Brief aside, Devil Rays is a terrible team name that was only made worse by calling them the Rays. Though in all fairness the Tampa Bay area is terrible. But there have been a rash of social media outbursts about thing perpetrated by Red Sox fans against the various contingents of Rays' players, fans and what not.

Firstly, David Price's girlfriend, known colloquially in Massachusetts as "A Fucking Liar" made various claims about fans throwing trash and generally being assholes. Well being an asshole is every baseball fans' god given right. But what defines an asshole baseball fan? Swearing, drinking, all that fun stuff? Maybe. I think the term asshole can only be applied to fans who go out of their way to bother people. But even still. It's playoff baseball. She called Sox fans "pieces of shit". Right, because it was Sox fans who killed that guy in California. Oh wait, no.

Another salacious story was that a Sox fan stole a sting ray out of the horribly misguided aquarium thing they have there. Who the fuck steals a sting ray? Who saw him stealing a fucking sting ray and didn't stop him? These items inspire such skepticism.

Now, the point of this post is, who the fuck believes these lies? These two stories are ridiculous. But why do they get so much traction?

Social media?

It's a way to lie.

Attention seeking dopes?

They do lie. But it is a way for them to seek attention.

So what then?

People. People lie because other people believe their lies and that makes people lie more and more.

So what's the solution?

Well, there really isn't one obvious solution. If you're stupid that is. But for the people who have a quarter of a brain cell left in their heads the solution is obvious, though somewhat painful. We need to start calling people out on their bullshit. Or even better, ignore them. Don't acknowledge that they even exist.

We all have bullshit meters in our heads. Some better calibrated than others. But when we hear these things that set off those little imaginary meters in our heads, we need to call people out. Sitting idly by and letting people lie is how they lie more.

Let's take a hypothetical situation. The girlfriend of an athlete is probably going to be an attractive woman in most cases. So she's pretty and what not. Who tells pretty people to shut up? Who tells them they're liars? No one. Attractive people sometimes get a carte blanche to say whatever rattles into their dumb heads. Not all attractive people of course. But a vapid dunce who dates an athlete, who I'm sure built their relationship on a deep personal connection, probably hasn't heard or acknowledged any negativity in her life.

So that's why lies multiply and exist as they do.