Montrealers Want To Be Lied To
You learn a lot while working at MTLBlog, and one thing I've learned over the years is that Montrealers, much like everyone else, want to be lied to.
Let me explain.
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Whenever we write a piece of news that has a negative connotation, I get a bunch emails from people who are in denial.
Even when I say that "Montreal will be hit with a snowstorm", and I include the links to prove that fact inside the article, people actually get mad at me, as if I'm the one causing the storm. In the end they just want me to lie to them and tell them everything will be okay.
I did a bit of research and it turns out, this is real phenomenon. People secretly want to be lied to, regardless of what the facts are.
Dr. Hurd is a psychotherapist who wrote about this concept. As an example he mentions how some people react when they fail at a particular task. No one wants to be told it's their own fault, they want to blame another factor, even if it's a lie.
I know I could do it, but I just didn’t have the motivation. How can I get motivation?” People talk about motivation as if it’s something you can acquire without effort. But motivation is not magic. It just refers to wanting something badly enough to work for it.When someone tells me they weren’t motivated I usually correct them by saying, “So you didn’t really want it all that much, did you?” This, of course, makes a lot of people mad. They don’t like the implication that it’s their own choices that led to their disappointments. They’d rather think it was something or someone else.
No one wants the truth unless it's positive. They just want to hear "happy talk" so they feel good and then they move on with their day.
And once they've moved on, it doesn't matter what happens after that, because they will no longer pay attention.
Look at what happened with the pit bull ban came into effect. When it was first announced, every freaked out. Then came the positive news: "Montreal pit bull ban gets suspended indefinitely". And that's all it took for people to stop caring. They got their happy news and they completely forgot about the issue.
And now, the pit bull ban is going into effect like it was originally, but there's no public outrage.
Same thing happened with the caleches. Last year the hot topic was that caleches should be banned.
Now, that has the appearance of a positive headline, because if caleches were banned then the horses would no longer suffer right?
Wrong! The owners didn't know what to do with the horses, and they could no longer afford to take care of them, so many of them were going to be euthanized.
As soon as that bit of negative information came out, everyone suddenly stopped caring. They care so little in fact, that the Mayor of Montreal just announced a $500,000 investment to keep caleches in Montreal and no one gives a shit.
So what happened? Well, the truth came out. That's all it took.
But it happens constantly. We jump on the good news and we ignore or deny the bad news.
So in that spirit: All dogs will be fine, the buses are always on time, the horses secretly love pulling caleches, there's no construction happening anywhere, our Christmas tree isn't ugly, Trump didn't actually get elected, and summer is just around the corner.
See? denial solves everything.
