2013's April Fools

http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/46791851034/hugo-chavez-is-the-recently-deceased-former

The above article highlights some ignorant people who got confused over Google using it's homescreen-replacement "doodle" on March 31 to highlight the birthday of Cesar Chavez.  Many people got it confused with Hugo Chavez, recently deceased Venezuelan dictator, even though the Doodle tells you who it is and presents you with Google results of their lives.  Oh, and their names and lives are different.

A few people got incensed after thinking about it for only the amount of time necessary to compose an angry tweet.  A few acknowledged their error, but others doubled down. No doubt they reiterated because of the social shame we all feel if we go overboard on an opinion nowadays and then discover that we were wholly or partially wrong. In order to avoid embarrassment, many people .  Opinions were voiced that all left-leaning Hispanic people must be the same, or that it was a greater affront that Google didn't do something with colored eggs or Jesus (who fits the brown-skinned left-winger trope well).

I get a lot of schadenfreude out of these, but I suspect that's only because I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that I might be wrong in public. I hope that I'd have enough sense to say, "Man, I was wrong." But I have a suspicion that I'd probably get uncomfortable enough to try and B.S. an answer out of nothing. That's certainly happened before -- I'm writing this partially to try and remind myself that isn't a good way to handle anything.


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