"12,000 people can't be wrong"

[Manford Thirty-Sixborough]

I'v been watching television recently, and keep encountering this phrase at the start of a shampoo advert, and it's got me thinking - by what possible logic can this be correct?

Can anybody think of any divisive issue which, in any resolution, doesn't leave an absolute minimum of 12,000 people wrong?

[Cerys]

The re-election of George W Bush.

[slim]

Now you've confused me. Surely that would leave a minimum of 12000 people wrong?

I can think of one: if ladyslim and I disagreed on the issue of whether a coin would land tails up or not. It's divisive, and one of us would be wrong.

[sproggy]

Maybe 12,000 people have purchased 1 bottle of shampoo each and have felt their decision to purchase said product was not wrong.

Or perhaps, 12 million people have purchased the shampoo and 99% of them said it was shite.

[Cerys]

Now you've confused me. Surely that would leave a minimum of 12000 people wrong?

I was using it as a direct response to the thread title.

[Flook]

Have they sold one bottle to 12,000 different people do you think or just shifted 12,000 bottles?

Maybe someone somewhere bought a job lot. Maybe 12,000 bottles actually  left the factory but 6,000 are still sitting on shelves in Aldi.

Come to think of it, in a country of 64,000,000 people if it was my shampoo and I'd only sold 12,000 bottles I'd be trying to work out what the fuck was wrong with it.

[DuncanC]

How many Nazis were there? GODWIN'S!!!!1!1

[Artemis]

Well logically, any event that doesn't involve more then 12,000 people.

This sounds like a lame argument - welll, all that lot liked it - do you want to tell them all they didn't get it right?

Well, yes.

Even if I am a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

[slim]

I was using it as a direct response to the thread title.

If I could adequately type in the silly voice of "ooooh! haaaand-bag!" then my response, in said voice, would be:

Oooh, ner-bernie-ner! Ernie-bernie-ner!


It's what I do when ladyslim gets all snippy like that :)

[The Boston Crab]

I always use this argument when people tell me eating dogs is bad. "1.3 bilion Chinese can't be wrong."

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Even if I am a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

Thankyou for that. I've never heard that before, shamefully.

[Cerys]

It's what I do when ladyslim gets all snippy like that :)]

Snippy?  I wasn't being snippy!  Um - was I?

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

by what possible logic can this be correct?

they're just using the same science they use for every other advert.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Boswelox to it I say.

[Harfyyn Teuport]

I'm really glad that my Danone Actimel now has added L. Caseii Immunitas in it, because I've been trying to get more of that for weeks.

[Chers penis]

How long did it take to sell these 12'000 bottles? it could have been fucking years.

[Some Herbert]

How about the number of people who believe homoeopathy works, or any number of other pseudoscientific quackery like qi-gong, etc? There are millions of people who buy into that nonsense.

[Sherringford Hovis]

Sturgeon's Revelation/Sturgeon's Law: prov.

"Ninety percent of everything is crud".

Condensed from an original quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon:

"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud."

Sturgeon himself called this "Sturgeon's Revelation", and it first appeared in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction; he gave Sturgeon's Law as:

"Nothing is always absolutely so."

Oddly, when Sturgeon's Revelation is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to 'crap'.

I always use this argument when people tell me eating dogs is bad. "1.3 bilion Chinese can't be wrong."

A Chinese colleague of mine is at pains to point out that there are certain cultural parallels that can be drawn between those that eat dog in his country and those that wear Burberry in the UK.