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Q&A

Will majority of population dismiss a video of fight between two supernatural beings?

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This question is inspired by discussion in the comments of the question What kind of supernatural powers don't break the masquerade?

TL;DR Suppose you want to create a world where beings with supernatural power live among us humans, and we are not aware of them. In that case there are three options:

  1. Apply some plot device that eliminates the supernatural effects from our perception, memory, beliefs whatever
  2. Use supernatural powers that are difficult to detect
  3. State that supernatural manifestations are simply dismissed as fakes

The first choice is a writer's decision, if you want your world to work like that, it'll work like that. The second choice looks to me like the only option without handwaving. But the 3rd choice seems implausible to me.

Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.

Somebody claims that they've seen a werewolf and demon fighting below their balcony and present as a proof video recorded with their smartphone. The video is of relativily good quality and doesn't seem to be edited to amateur eyes. The video is 90 seconds long showing something that could be best described as werewolf fighting with something that looks like a demon.

Would the majority of the population dismiss it as a hoax?

My thoughts

After reading through all the answers & comments, and checking myself various "proof of existence" videos I think that a single video won't make much difference, no matter good it is. So worldbulders could just ignore very few incidents.

If multiple videos appear, then some wealthy organization that is able to pay for disinformation, could make matters moot and suppress the truth about werewolves. Either by making fake videos or discrediting the sources.

But if those videos start to appear regularly the public will become aware, it's only matter of time.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. - - Abraham Lincoln

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/63517. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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