Pass the message

Do you remember the childhood game – Pass the message??

It is a game where an original message is pass down a line of people and the last person speaks out the message he hears. How often is the message intact when it reaches the end??

Somewhere along the line, there will be one or two fellow adding and altering part of it, one or two whom try to summarized into his own words, while others lifting only what they wish to hear. The first person would be accused for the whole new message that was created out of his control. But in reality, we know that there could be more than one middleman - telling tales.

The brief write up that I was involved had been published, and to my surprise, 40% of the information I gave had been altered by various degrees. I knew it coming, but I had least expect the information to be altered so much and I guess it is due to the social mindset of people about the topic.

Since young, we had associated “3 times a week” to exercising; eating fruits and vegetables daily and minimising junk food in our diet. So, when I did not meet the minimum benchmark of the fitness mindset, my words have to be fine tuned to cater for the social image. And the people who read it may interpret it in different manners; some even exaggerate it so much that I went totally speechless…

For instance, during the interview, I was asked if I go to the gym or play badminton. I told the journalist that I seldom play badminton and seldom visit the gym, like once a year kind, but to my astonishment, she wrote that I visit the gym and plays badminton occasionally. My mouth fell open…

And that is not the end yet…

I was told that yinglin read the write up and told ash I hit the gym and plays badminton twice a week. My jaws crushed to the floor…

How the hell does seldom become occasionally and finally twice a week?? Someone, shoot me!!!

Besides that, other parts of the write up had also been altered. I said I choose to walk down the stairs, but the article insisted that I walk up the stairs. I said I have fruits either after lunch or dinner only, but they insisted that I have fruits after every meal.

Isn’t it all that exaggerating?? It felt like people are stuffing words into my mouth. It was obvious that they had magnified the goods and diminished the bad… But well, perhaps I am not that fit or healthy after all and they have to cook up a story to make it juicer.

Anyway, my advice is – Do not believe everything on the paper. There may be someone behind, choosing or filtering what we read, editing the information on hand and packaging them to satisfy the public. We can only have limited control, and nothing more than that. It is not within our ability to stop the information from being twisted again and again and there is nothing we can do to shut the mouth of others.

Now, can you see that this is a real life example of the game – pass the message?? Can you see how much information could been altered and exaggerated??

Believe it or not, you judge.