Thread by @asymmetricinfo

I'm not going to have time to properly tweet storm my column on Jussie Smollett, so I'll just note a few things.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/jussi…

First, conservatives took this to be a column about why we weren't skeptical enough, which it is ... but it's really a column about why *so many* of the high profile stories in this genre turn out to be false.

This happens waaaaayyy more often than I'd expect from random chance.

My answer is that we're actually selecting for the stories that are *most likely* to be fake: the ones that are super-dramatic and completely unambiguous. You know, like crimes in the movies.

Those are the crimes we choose to publicize. Partly because they *feel* really true, and partly because if they happen to fit a political narrative you already endorse, they feel like slam dunk "proof" that narrative is true.

Real crime is very often just messy and complicated and confusing and you have to argue about why, yes, this was a hate crime and not just a bar fight; why yes, this was a rape and not just bad sex.

One of the primary characteristics of the famous hoaxes is that they're inarguable: the attacks are so dramatic that you can't possibly read events any other way.

If you filter for crimes that match the way humans like to tell stories, you're going to end up with a lot of fiction.

Which in turn will convince people that "victims" lie about hate crimes and rape constantly, because their small mental sample of incidents will be littered with fakes.

That's all I have time for, except to mention one random thing: HuffPo is reporting that Smollett was motivated by anger over what he considered to be an inadequate salary.

huffpost.com/entry/jussie-s…

Which ... I can't even.

Leave aside that 18 episodes a year at $65k per episode seems like ... a pretty good salary? I mean, people care most about their comparison group; maybe he felt he was underpaid compared to others on the show, or similar roles on other shows, or whatever.

If it is indeed true that Smollett faked two hate crimes because he thought he was underpaid ... like, how is the action related to the goal of getting paid more?

1. Make up a hate crime
2. ???
3. Higher pay!

It takes my breath away. I am stonkered.

Even assuming that this would, actually, somehow result in higher pay, did he not factor in the possibility of getting caught and his pay going to zero? Or if he did, then just how big a raise was he expecting? I'd like to see that expected value calculation.

Anyway, that's all I got, folks, because I'm off to a conference in sunny Arizona, where tomorrow I will try to muster some taunting tweets for those I've left behind on the coasts. And okay, maybe some tweets about the conference: scetl.asu.edu/content/polari…

Meanwhile please read the column, which, I will remind you, contains much ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CONTENT NOT FOUND IN THIS TWEETSTORM, SO READ IT, OKAY?

washingtonpost.com/opinions/jussi…