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Cottingley fairies still intrigue 100 years on


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  • The title was changed to Cottingley fairies still intrigue 100 years on

Does it still intrigue? They admitted to them being fake!

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  • The title was changed to Cottingley fairies still intrigue 100 years on
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13 minutes ago, Saru said:

You don't find it intriguing that some photographs of paper cut-outs taken by two young girls in their garden managed to fool millions ?

This is a very famous and unique case - nothing like it is ever likely to happen again.

What about the Bigfoot video that got the ball rolling? 

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38 minutes ago, Saru said:

You don't find it intriguing that some photographs of paper cut-outs taken by two young girls in their garden managed to fool millions ?

This is a very famous and unique case - nothing like it is ever likely to happen again.

Unfortunately I don't find it intriguing that they managed to fool millions, after all, there are millions of fools.

It makes for interesting reading as a story though, so maybe interesting rather than intriguing would be a better descriptor for my personal feelings.

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I found it rather impressive the first time I read about it. 

They fooled a lot of people, and given the state of Photoshop at the time, many found no reason NOT to believe the pictures.

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1 hour ago, Saru said:

You don't find it intriguing that some photographs of paper cut-outs taken by two young girls in their garden managed to fool millions ?

This is a very famous and unique case - nothing like it is ever likely to happen again.

I find it intriguing. Not the aspect of if the Cottingley fairies were real or not-but rather the psychology and the social climate of the time. It is a rather unique case IMO. Hoaxes are often set up and pulled off by adults, particularly in the era the Cottingley fairies are set in. It's a fair rarity for children to do so.

I also find conflagration of the story interesting. Those girls only were meaning to have a little photo fun with a few of their friends/family. They didn't set out to hoax millions with their photo. But the way the belief spread like wildfire, it's a bit akin to how UL's like slenderman and killer clowns can "capture" millions very quickly. The Cottingley fairies might be one of the earliest examples of the modern media age (photos) documentation of this phenomenon of belief spread.

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11 minutes ago, rashore said:

I find it intriguing. Not the aspect of if the Cottingley fairies were real or not-but rather the psychology and the social climate of the time. It is a rather unique case IMO. Hoaxes are often set up and pulled off by adults, particularly in the era the Cottingley fairies are set in. It's a fair rarity for children to do so.

I also find conflagration of the story interesting. Those girls only were meaning to have a little photo fun with a few of their friends/family. They didn't set out to hoax millions with their photo. But the way the belief spread like wildfire, it's a bit akin to how UL's like slenderman and killer clowns can "capture" millions very quickly. The Cottingley fairies might be one of the earliest examples of the modern media age (photos) documentation of this phenomenon of belief spread.

Well the thing was; photography was still new and people had already understood that, unlike painted portraits it showed a person or place as they really were, without flattery or interpretation.  So fewer people would even have considered that somebody can fake any given element of a photo, even if it is through such a simple technique of sticking paper cutouts into the ground.
And you have mentioned the spirit of the time yourself, people in the late 19th/early 20th century desperately sought for something to belief in and for anything that could and would lend proof to those beliefs; seances, mediums oujia broads...Then the horrors of World War I made people want to focus on something else. The photographs in particular gained fame with the help of Conan Doyle, who had lost a big chunk of his male relatives in the war and was at this point desperately clinging to the idea of an afterlife that could be scientifically proven and contacted. 

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31 minutes ago, seanjo said:

Frankly, I find it idiotic of the fooled, I saw these photos years ago as a kid and they didn't fool me.

only because you know fairies don't exist i hope;)

 

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22 hours ago, glorybebe said:

Love how two young girls were able to pull this off.  

sir arthur conan doyle was the hoaxer from what i can remember- the girls were just in the picture

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17 hours ago, Dejarma said:

sir arthur conan doyle was the hoaxer from what i can remember- the girls were just in the picture

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't the hoaxer, he was suckered in like everyone else.

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2 hours ago, Saru said:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't the hoaxer, he was suckered in like everyone else.

Now THAT is impressive.  It does say a lot about a general human tendency to want to suspend disbelief.  I wonder, with the current state of imaging technology, what would be required to cause the average skeptic today to buy-in to some discovery that would normally be unbelievable?  

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11 minutes ago, and then said:

Now THAT is impressive. 

Why is that impressive? Only because he wrote Sherlock Holmes doesn't mean he's more or less susceptible to hoaxes than other people.
The man had a livelong interest and belief in the supernatural and after losing a lot of his relatives (including a son and his two nephews) in WW I he desperately clung to any rumour and tiny bit of "evidence" for the supernatural in hopes of proving, and possibly contacting, the afterlife.

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1 hour ago, and then said:

I wonder, with the current state of imaging technology, what would be required to cause the average skeptic today to buy-in to some discovery that would normally be unbelievable?

facts

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4 hours ago, Saru said:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't the hoaxer, he was suckered in like everyone else.

I watched a documentary that suggested Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew they were fake to start with but went along with it= therefore bringing it to the world & earning a few bob from it???

Is this true? Who knows

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I just love the cottingley fairies, I live a couple of miles from the very spot and took my daughter to the beck and what is left of the wood where they were photographed, there are also a couple of other hot spots in surrounding woods here that have fairy stories, my daughter and I visited them all several times when she was a young girls, she is 22 now but the magic of looking for them with her back then is a memory I will always cherish... The guy that played Paddy the vet in Emmerdale bought the house and lived there at some point, I asked him if we could go through his garden and follow the steps of the original girls that took the photo's, he was more than helpful... True or Not - they will always exist in my heart and have brought me happy memories..  

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On 3/5/2018 at 6:12 AM, and then said:

Now THAT is impressive.  It does say a lot about a general human tendency to want to suspend disbelief.  I wonder, with the current state of imaging technology, what would be required to cause the average skeptic today to buy-in to some discovery that would normally be unbelievable?  

This is a super relevant question. For me, it would need to be either volume and quality of images that the vast majority of photo professionals (scholars, photo employees, visual manipulation experts, and generally those who are qualified to make such claims) can not find any fault with. That being said, if there were, say, a single super-clear image of a sasquatch? That'd be a really hard sell, mainly due to the sophistication of our technology. I would definitely advocate for the investigation of the area, in the event of a single clear and obviously realistic photo, but I doubt that a single photo of anything could be considered empirical proof of a cryptid's existence anymore.

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On 3/5/2018 at 8:12 AM, and then said:

Now THAT is impressive.  It does say a lot about a general human tendency to want to suspend disbelief.  I wonder, with the current state of imaging technology, what would be required to cause the average skeptic today to buy-in to some discovery that would normally be unbelievable?  

Doyle wasn't a skeptic. He rather famously split with Houdini who was a skeptic. If anything, it showed the fault of the sort of logic he employed in his stories. 

I say that as a big Holmes fan. 

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On 3/5/2018 at 9:51 AM, Dejarma said:

facts

quite... you really should learn to read for C O N T E X T ... 

 

3 hours ago, ShadowSot said:

Doyle wasn't a skeptic. He rather famously split with Houdini who was a skeptic. If anything, it showed the fault of the sort of logic he employed in his stories. 

I say that as a big Holmes fan. 

I considered Doyle to be a well educated, sound reasoner.  I had no intimate knowledge of his background beyond that.  I agree that his logic was less than perfect ;) 

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13 hours ago, and then said:

quite... you really should learn to read for C O N T E X T ... 

i was more than happy with my reply but thanks for the advice

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17 hours ago, and then said:

quite... you really should learn to read for C O N T E X T ... 

 

I considered Doyle to be a well educated, sound reasoner.  I had no intimate knowledge of his background beyond that.  I agree that his logic was less than perfect ;) 

Doyle was intelligent, and played a large role in the development of modern police forensics and techniques. But he also fell heavily into spiritualism following the death of his son. 

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On 03/03/2018 at 0:20 PM, I'mConvinced said:

Does it still intrigue? They admitted to them being fake!

One of them insisted until she died in 1986 that at least one of the photos was real and the other insisted until the day she died in 1988 that they both genuinely saw fairies.

Edited by Black Monk
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5 hours ago, Black Monk said:

One of them insisted until she died in 1986 that at least one of the photos was real and the other insisted until the day she died in 1988 that they both genuinely saw fairies.

Which is again interesting but not intriguing, at least to me. They faked them, and whilst they probably believed in fairies their whole lives they lost all credibility the moment they admitted hoaxing even one photo.

It was also their story and their fame. To completely deny it would be to destroy all mystery, unlikely for two ladies who enjoyed creating it.

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5 hours ago, Black Monk said:

One of them insisted until she died in 1986 that at least one of the photos was real and the other insisted until the day she died in 1988 that they both genuinely saw fairies.

Rick Dyer also insists that bigfoot is real.

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