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From het3@panix.com Mon Aug 18 19:17:11 1997 Date: 9 Apr 1996 05:50:57 -0400
From: Harry MF Teasley <het3@panix.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Snuff films?

joshua bequeathed:

> Anyway, what would be the big deal if snuff films actually existed?

KTK waxed (and waxed and waxed) eloquently on the problems of belief in snuff films, but I see one more thing that bears saying. It is relevant not only to snuff films, but also to the origins of Ring Around the Rosie and Organ Theft stories, both current threads.

It is on the absence of evidence, and understanding exactly how compelling a conspicuous lack of evidence can be. Take snuff films, for example: Kevin The Keith outlined a rough organisational chart for the manufacture and distribution of them. The necessary manpower resources for such an industry would be significant enough that a lapse in their security measures (the measures they take to prevent their discovery by the law) would be a statistical inevitability. Someone somewhere would have the reason to defect from the system and they would be able to supply proof of the films' existence. Drug dealers, CIA agents, used car salesmen, all of these occupations have seen folks tell all on Oprah, while those nasty snuff film producers and organ stealing doctors have so far avoided all attempts to ferret them out.

As with Ring Around the Rosie, the lack of evidence of its existence before 1790 is conspicuous when trying to date it as being from the mid-1600s. For it to have escaped any recording whatsoever for over a hundred years (especially escaping attempts to record childrens' rhymes specifically) would be miraculous. The lack of evidence is not merely conspicuous, it is damning.

All too often a "conspicuous lack of evidence in favor of x" is turned around into, "So there's no hard evidence against x." This is terribly misleading. There is always the possibility that the snuff film network is the first network of people in the history of mankind immune to detection by people specifically looking for it, has maintained a perfect record of 100% loyalty from every participant, and has never come into any contact with anyone who has seen more profit in exposing it than in keeping silent about it. "The contingency is exceedingly remote, sir," as Jeeves would say.

Harry "Between KTK and me, we can filibuster anything" Teasley

--
I, of course, arrived on Usenet with wisdom full-formed from the skull of Zeus. -TC