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A Lie I Heard this Week

2021-10-01 · letter vlog · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: History & curiosities) · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion, heavy topic

Starting from a false TikTok claim that 'news' is an acronym, Hank explains folk etymologies and that 'news' just means what is new, argues that our bias for the new hides ongoing crises such as infant mortality in Sierra Leone, credits John and the community with raising tens of millions for Partners In Health, and announces Pizzamas text updates.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A TikTok lie that news stands for notable events, weather and sports; folk etymologies and the real origin of hangnail

  • ★★ Hank says someone on TikTok claimed 'news' stands for 'notable events, weather, and sports'; Hank calls it a lie, a folk etymology: made-up origins that make sense and spread but aren't real. — 00:00:11 · TikTok
  • ★★ Hank's favorite folk etymology is hangnail: the nail was a hard patch like a corn, not a fingernail, and 'ang' meant painful, so painful hand and foot conditions were angnails. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — News comes from new; the news is not necessarily what is important; our bias for the new is human nature

  • ★★ Hank says 'news' actually comes from 'new': an adjective turned into a noun, a pluralization of new, which over time became 'the news'. — 00:01:08
  • ★★★ Hank argues the news is not necessarily what is important: 2,000 Americans dying of a disease in one day would be news, but 2,000 dying every day is not, because it is not new. (hypothetical) — 00:01:24
  • ★★★ Hank says this is not the fault of terrible people in the news industry but human nature, probably for good reason: new things are what we understand least. — 00:01:42
  • ★★★ Hank argues our bias for the new keeps us from properly understanding the world, and especially hurts how we deal with ongoing crises. — 00:01:56

00:02:01 — Infant mortality in Sierra Leone as an ongoing crisis that is not news; John, the community and Partners In Health

  • ★★★ Hank says infant deaths per thousand births are below six in most places watching the video, but 80 in Sierra Leone, down from 160 when he was born in 1980; devastating, and not news. — 00:02:05 · Sierra Leone
  • ★★ Hank says that in news terms falling from 16% to 8% infant mortality is good news, but 8% infant mortality is still a bad situation. — 00:02:26 · Sierra Leone
  • ★★ Hank says humans have many biases, and he didn't understand that we are bad at dealing with ongoing long-term crises until John spent time helping him understand it. — 00:02:45 · John Green
  • ★★★ Hank says that because John did that work, they have raised tens of millions of dollars for Partners In Health, and donors, Awesome Socks Club members, Pizzamas buyers and community members were all part of it. — 00:02:53 · John Green, Partners In Health, Awesome Socks Club, Pizzamas, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ Hank says this is what a strong community can do: look past what is new to see what is important. — 00:03:10 · Nerdfighteria

00:03:15 — Pizzamas starts Monday; text-message updates with a daily pizza dad joke; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank says Pizzamas starts Monday, when he and John make videos five days a week as they did in 2007; he is both excited and overwhelmed. — 00:03:15 · Pizzamas, Brotherhood 2.0
  • ★★ Hank announces Pizzamas text-message updates this year (2021), with sign-up linked in the description; subscribers get messages from him only during Pizzamas, and maybe special access to some stuff. — 00:03:24 · Pizzamas
  • ★★ Hank commits to texting subscribers one pizza-themed dad joke every day of Pizzamas; he has a fair number but not all of them yet. — 00:03:37 · Pizzamas

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says people are good at saying things are bad while insisting they themselves are not part of the problem, which might be true but is awfully convenient. — video description
  • ★★★ The description says competing news organizations have no incentive to act as a public good; outlets bear some responsibility for rage-bait, but so does Hank, their customer, for engaging with it. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: cognitive bias · folk etymology · journalism

Also: Projects: Awesome Socks Club · Brotherhood 2.0 · Pizzamas

Organizations: Partners In Health · TikTok

Concepts: dad joke · hangnail · human nature · misinformation

Places: Sierra Leone · United States

fact: infant mortality rate

Also centred on cognitive bias: John Green is an IDIOT! And so are you. · How do We Get Anything Done At All?

Also centred on journalism: Does "The Press" Hate YouTube? · Why We Stopped Making Explainers: EXPLAINED · Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment

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