Plausible Story isn't the only site promulgating confused ideas of what might or might not be true. In the first of what might one day become a series, we'll take a look at plausible and implausible uses of our name.
(We apologize for skipping merrily into the royal "we" there, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
And now, without further ado, we turn to google—without which we would be bereft of all reference—type "plausible story" in the search field, and hit return. Ignoring ourselves (except to wonder just how many plausible stories can be spinning in the ether if this month-old blog already comes up first), we find, among the first twenty hits
1. this scathing review of a historian's theory about Denmark Vesey. Denmark Vesey, remember, was the freedman who organized a slave uprising that was put down before it started, back in 1822 Charleston. The historian in the spotlight claims that Vesey was framed by paranoid white Charlestonians—calling into question, then, one of the legendary antislavery stories of the ante-bellum era. Bullshit, says the reviewer, in more words than that, and with this comment on story- (history-) telling and truth:
The records of the Denmark Vesey conspiracy trials . . . do, indeed, open a window onto the perceptions of black Charlestonians, but it is a window one can only see through if one reads with an eye to the kinds of historical truths one can find equally in journalism and in the kind of fiction that obeys the conventions of realism. Those truths are real and important--historians have long used novels as historical sources--but they should not be confused with the kinds of truths that we at least like to pretend one can find in court proceedings.
2. A Plausible Story of My Life So Far, which turns out to be the narcissistic and nearly impenetrable autobiography of a Turkish—what could you call him? ESL teacher doesn't do him justice—man, set on a color-shifting background of glittering stars. A taste:
I still have some inclination left in me to prove how inconceivably intelligent by nature, how incomparably knowledgeable in all sciences, and how compassionately philanthropic in my human relations I am -- prove it to no less than the whole planet Earth through the www! But somehow, all I seem to have accomplished is to demonstrate how gloriously efficient I have been in creating real-life dramas.
3. a message board discussion of whether or not you could write a plausible science fiction story about alien microbes that release hallucinogenic chemicals in human brains;
4. a speculation on why people react to the sound of chalk on blackboards:
Pity the children of today who'll grow old and die never having heard the screech of chalk on blackboard, or experienced its effects. I can understand* why that noise makes our hackles rise (?) (is it the hackles that rise, or the hair on hackles?) - it sounds like a wounded animal, it's the noise that, if you are talented, you make when birding to get the feathered guys to come out and rubberneck at the scene of the crime.Or could it be a primate alarm call? Plausible stories abound...
*"understand" = "come up with plausible story"
5. a radio show transcript from 2000, discussing the pitfalls of believing what you read on the internet;
6. and a piece of an e-mail correspondence from 1997 that seems to be defending someone from an accusation of cheating, which probably deserves its own post, should we ever have time to decipher it.
Any patterns emerging? Any lessons to be drawn? Any plausible hypotheses that we could go out and test? Or is this exercise a waste of time?
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