Rumors: A Necessary Evil

Unfortunately, those who mostly rely on rumor find themselves misinformed and misguided on any course of events because the information passed on has not properly been verified and proved to be factual.

Negative rumor mongering often defames, belittles, embarrasses and psychologically tortures those who have been affected with in a snap of a finger.

The scale of damage for the Individual personalities, places or events that have negatively been rumored about is so great that it is often so hard to mend their already damaged reputation

A case in point can be drawn from a recent guild presidential race between two student leaders of one African university whose contest for the University students’ top most leadership post was so tight.

Having realized that the race was too close to call, one of the contestants hatched a plan to have an upper hand over his political rival.

In order to have his plan succeed, he printed out several leaflets in one night, hired some people who widely distributed them to the whole University campus; that his rival had a history of mental sickness and was not therefore fit to take up such a challenging leadership position.

He actually claimed that his rival’s mental illness was inherent among his family members and no amount of medication could ever treat it.

So damaging was more of the content in the written rumor that any one who got hold of the leaflet and read it, simply switched sides and supported the side that had spread the rumor

By the time the campaign team woke up in the morning to dispel the false rumor, it was too late. The wrong deed had already been done.

At voting time, the final election results were a foregone conclusion. The trick seemed to have worked and the rumormongers won the election.

This then begs the question. Should rumors be left to spread or we simply have no way to control them?

Some schools of thought have certainly summed the answer up in one single philosophical statement.

“Rumors are a necessary evil”.