A hoax most cruel
WOW.
After reading this article I’m not sure where to start. One thing I must say is that there are way to many people in this world who are so completely, undeniably, flat-out stupid. I don’t care what anybody says about conformity, and listening to authority and or authoritative figures, that is no excuse for anything that happened in any of these stories.
The fact that this one man hoaxed something like 70 different places to perform these searches completely blows my mind.
When I say that there are so many stupid people, I truly mean it because there is no way that I would have either performed such a search or let myself become a victim of one of these searches…and I will explain why.
First of all, if I worked at McDonald’s and my manager told me to go in the back room, I might go. If he/she then proceeded to order me to take of my clothes, question me about stolen items or contraband, and then tell me that I was in trouble with the law…I would probably tell him to…well, I can’t really say it but you get what I mean. Even if I had stolen something, which I wouldn’t, and I’m pretty sure most of these victims hadn’t, I would wait till a police officer was standing in front of me before I even said anything else…never mind take off my clothes. The funny thing is, that most of these people were so stupid, and must have lacked all common sense because they didn’t even think twice about these things.
Like I said, if a police officer was standing in front of me telling me to do something, I would do it (that doesn’t include taking of my close, performing oral sex, or any of the other terrible things that people did). I wouldn’t do it for any manager, and unless the police officer was a fake, at least he was in front of me dressed in a police uniform with a badge and gun….not some voice on the phone. The fact that people actually felt that because they were the manager (or even the managers fiancé!!!) at a McDonalds, that it gave them the right to do things like Nix where “He ordered her to dance with her arms above her head, to see, the caller said, if anything “would shake out.” He made her do jumping jacks, deep knee bends, stand on a swivel chair, then a desk. He made her sit on his lap and kiss him; the caller said that would allow Nix to smell anything that might be on her breath.” And then he “slapped her on the buttocks, until they were red”. I mean, COME ON! People, have to be practically brain dead in order to do those kinds of things just because somebody on the phone tells you they are a police officer. Perhaps if a voice on the phone said, “this person is dangerous and may have a weapon, so take them in a back room and keep an eye on them until the police can come take charge of the situation” I would probably listen. But a voice telling me that a young girl suspected of stealing change at a McDonald’s should be forced “to strip-search and perform oral sex” is a completely different situation. As one lawyer said, “You don’t have to be a Phi Beta Kappa to know not to strip-search a girl who is accused of stealing change”.
I’m getting really heated up trying to comprehend how ridiculous people can be, and I don’t agree that they any of these people can try to put the blame on such things as conformity and following an authority figure. Why? Because there’s a reason we have police, they take care of these situations for us. The police don’t call us and ask us to take care of the situations, we call them. Think about it. On top of that, if these people are being put into jail because they were “impersonating a police officer”, which is a felony by the way, then it makes sense that if a strip search was necessary, a police officer would have done the search!!!
Honestly, I don’t believe that these people were conforming in any way, shape, or form. Instead, they were all just stupid enough to become senseless drones, and follow the orders of an unidentified “authority figure”. If I was a manager or a worker under question, I would not have done anything so stupid. I don’t care what anybody has to say, this is not conformity, its stupidity…and that is no excuse for what happened. In my mind, the managers should be locked up, and the victims should be given all the help they need for free because that would obviously be a very traumatic event. And don’t get me started on the whole situation about our law system with all the loopholes that allows the man, who everybody knows to be guilty of these crimes, to get off with only a slight punishment, and even to put people like Nix (although I do not approve of him in any way) in jail for longer than Stewart.
People….THINK!
Stewart was acquitted in the end, believe it or not. The only people who faced sanctions were those who actually carried out his instructions. (Since he was acquitted, I suppose I should qualify the ‘his’ but from my reading, it looks like he did it.)
The disgust you feel is coming through loud and clear; I think most thinking people would share it, but look again at what you wrote in the last paragraph: “I don’t believe these people were conforming in any way . . . they were all just stupid enough to be come senseless drones.” But isn’t that what extreme conformity is? Becoming a ‘senseless drone’ and uncritically following some influence, benign or otherwise?
Put another way, does mere ‘stupidity’ explain the seemingly inexplicable actions? Is ‘stupidity’ an irreducible concept, or can it, too, be broken down into smaller parts and if so, what are those parts? Are MIlgram and Asch’s research really of no help here?