The Big LIe as Marketing Material
Feb. 24th, 2014 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI enjoy collecting examples of one of the greater idiocies found on the web - that of an urban myth being exposed as an urban myth, but the people who spread it saying that it doesn't matter that this particular instance has been proved false, because it represented a greater underlying truth (a more primitive rebuttal is the "this might be a fake, but I'm sure that it happens anyway" -- see the great McDonald's Mugabe hoax).
But it would appear that this is not new to the web. Look here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26288619
The tale of Phyllis Pearsall, who claimed to have compiled the first A-Z map of London by spending a year walking 3,000 miles to map the city's 23,000 streets. Pearsall said she would rise at 05:00 and tramp the pavements for 18 hours a day.
It was bollocks, of course - a marketing stunt. Indeed, her father Her father Alexander Gross was a map-maker who had drawn up a very similar A-Z.
But, instead of giving the A-Z credit for being, like the London Underground Map, a product of its age, the backers claim that her self-made myth spoke of "an underlying truth". says Diane Samuels, who wrote the book for The A-Z of Mrs P (a play being performed at Southwark Playhouse. said that "She was an artist and a storyteller. It's a metaphor, too - on some level, if you're going through the records you are walking the streets."
Er, no. If you are going through the records you are researching, not walking the streets. And the excuse of "she was an artist and a storyteller" is no excuse at all.
But it would appear that this is not new to the web. Look here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26288619
The tale of Phyllis Pearsall, who claimed to have compiled the first A-Z map of London by spending a year walking 3,000 miles to map the city's 23,000 streets. Pearsall said she would rise at 05:00 and tramp the pavements for 18 hours a day.
It was bollocks, of course - a marketing stunt. Indeed, her father Her father Alexander Gross was a map-maker who had drawn up a very similar A-Z.
But, instead of giving the A-Z credit for being, like the London Underground Map, a product of its age, the backers claim that her self-made myth spoke of "an underlying truth". says Diane Samuels, who wrote the book for The A-Z of Mrs P (a play being performed at Southwark Playhouse. said that "She was an artist and a storyteller. It's a metaphor, too - on some level, if you're going through the records you are walking the streets."
Er, no. If you are going through the records you are researching, not walking the streets. And the excuse of "she was an artist and a storyteller" is no excuse at all.
A Deconstructionist Viewpoint
Date: 2014-02-26 07:52 pm (UTC)And what is a metaphor?
Anything that needs a meta, I suppose.