"Don't Be So Gullible"

By | April 3, 2007

Sound advice from reader WWP, who points out that yesterday’s entry about Julianne Moore replacing Gillian Anderson as agent Scully in the upcoming X-Files movie was taken from a “news” story that was really an April Fool’s joke.

I have so many conflicting feelings about this: relief that it isn’t true; remorse for ever doubting Gillian Anderson in the first place; disillusionment about who you can trust in this world. I mean, it should have been reliable information, right? It was on a web site.

Well,at least I’m not alone in making that kind of mistake.

UPDATE:

Lest anyone get too smug snickering at my gullibility, let me just point out that blogging is hard work. Having to sort real stuff out from fake stuff doesn’t make it any easier. In fact, it’s so stressful that one of my favorite bloggers has decided just to give up altogether. How depressing is that?

What’s that?

What do you mean, “check the date?”

It’s a what?

Oh.

Never mind.

  • Karl Hallowell

    Let it be known that I didn’t care enough to check the story. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

  • rjschwarz

    Well she did pinch hit for another FBI agent in Hannibal. Maybe they should just merge the two franchises.

    I liked x-files but the government conspiracy nonsense is so 9-10 and comes off as really pathetic now.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Personally, I always took the government conspiracy part of the story exactly as seriously as I took the UFOs and things like Chupacabra. It’s all just fantasy (or a parallel universe.) Entertaining, but no connection to the real world.

  • http://www.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Phil:

    Don’t feel gullible. I would have fallen for this too.

    Julianne Moore’s worked with David Duchovny before. It’s been awhile since an X-Files movie (maybe because they couldn’t get a key actor – perhaps Gillian Anderson – to sign on). And, as the article mentioned, Moore replaced another famous redhead in the Hannibal franchise.

    The whole point of an April Fool’s story is to get people to buy some crazy thing that’s implausible. Like spaghetti trees.

    Come on Moviehole! Aim higher! Get us to believe something stupid next year.

    Something like “Robert Deniro to play the title character in The Anna Nichole Smith Story.”