Chinese Whispers
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Responsible for much of the conversation on the planet Earth, this remains one of the simplest modes of communicating brief fragments of truth in the most uneconomic way possible.
The concept is simple. A tidbit of information passed from one person, spruced up a little to make it acceptable for future relay to others, continuing in this pattern until it reaches the ears of a lawyer. There is, however, an unwritten get-out clause that allows for the death of any person or persons contained in the Chinese Whisper, and in such cases, the story in its current stage becomes fact.
While the earliest exponent of a Chinese Whisper has been identified as a Jesus Christ of The Stables, Nazareth, it is only with the advent of the Tabloid Newspaper in the late 20th Century that it has really come into its own. Its very simplicity endears it to their prose form, since it is de ra guerre for Chinese Whispers to include only words of three or four syllables.
Take this example...
"She was talking to the milkman..."
Becomes...
"There she was, on the doorstep in her nightie talking to the milkman..."
And finally...
"Mrs Jones of 42 Riverside is a slut and a whore, your Honour, and I can categorically prove all of the facts which my client wrote in her unsigned letters..."
There are sundry filters through which one can feed any relayed information, and here are some of the more common - alcohol, envy, jealousy, lust, rebuttal, religious fervour. Blind ignorance and a blatant disregard for accuracy are, of course, essential.
However, far more common among the lower classes is a variation on the theme which we shall call The Tale Growing Longer For The Telling.
In this, the instigator of the story can have full editorial control of the content of their ideas. A simple story can become decorated to such a degree that the grain of untruth that began it all could not even be identified by the talker, and since it is as all as true as I am standing here, it matters little anyway.
There are few recorded examples of the lifetime of a Tale, though it seems that it is limited only by two things - the lifespan of the narrator, and his imagination. These are both hard limits to break, although it is not unlike a really gifted narrator to seek the assistance of a clairvoyant medium to pursue the benefits of a really good story!
The only recorded case of a Tale began on August 30th 1968, when Mr Geoffrey Knowlson of The Larkspur, Ipswich first began to tell the story of a prize bloom he was sure to triumph with at the Summer Fete until the unwelcome intrusion into his garden of the neighbours' Sheltie. Such was the exponential nature of Mr Knowlson's story, he is currently still relaying the latest draft to his local librarian, and at the time of writing had got as far as explaining that the slats in the fence had never been the same as the original ones but then there was that storm, do you remember, or was it before your time, well it wasn't even forecast...
Footnote - The Chinese peoples are phonetically incapable of whispering, a discovery made through the market research section of a large confectionery firm who have now resigned themselves to a policy of non-exploitation of the East.
The concept is simple. A tidbit of information passed from one person, spruced up a little to make it acceptable for future relay to others, continuing in this pattern until it reaches the ears of a lawyer. There is, however, an unwritten get-out clause that allows for the death of any person or persons contained in the Chinese Whisper, and in such cases, the story in its current stage becomes fact.
While the earliest exponent of a Chinese Whisper has been identified as a Jesus Christ of The Stables, Nazareth, it is only with the advent of the Tabloid Newspaper in the late 20th Century that it has really come into its own. Its very simplicity endears it to their prose form, since it is de ra guerre for Chinese Whispers to include only words of three or four syllables.
Take this example...
"She was talking to the milkman..."
Becomes...
"There she was, on the doorstep in her nightie talking to the milkman..."
And finally...
"Mrs Jones of 42 Riverside is a slut and a whore, your Honour, and I can categorically prove all of the facts which my client wrote in her unsigned letters..."
There are sundry filters through which one can feed any relayed information, and here are some of the more common - alcohol, envy, jealousy, lust, rebuttal, religious fervour. Blind ignorance and a blatant disregard for accuracy are, of course, essential.
However, far more common among the lower classes is a variation on the theme which we shall call The Tale Growing Longer For The Telling.
In this, the instigator of the story can have full editorial control of the content of their ideas. A simple story can become decorated to such a degree that the grain of untruth that began it all could not even be identified by the talker, and since it is as all as true as I am standing here, it matters little anyway.
There are few recorded examples of the lifetime of a Tale, though it seems that it is limited only by two things - the lifespan of the narrator, and his imagination. These are both hard limits to break, although it is not unlike a really gifted narrator to seek the assistance of a clairvoyant medium to pursue the benefits of a really good story!
The only recorded case of a Tale began on August 30th 1968, when Mr Geoffrey Knowlson of The Larkspur, Ipswich first began to tell the story of a prize bloom he was sure to triumph with at the Summer Fete until the unwelcome intrusion into his garden of the neighbours' Sheltie. Such was the exponential nature of Mr Knowlson's story, he is currently still relaying the latest draft to his local librarian, and at the time of writing had got as far as explaining that the slats in the fence had never been the same as the original ones but then there was that storm, do you remember, or was it before your time, well it wasn't even forecast...
Footnote - The Chinese peoples are phonetically incapable of whispering, a discovery made through the market research section of a large confectionery firm who have now resigned themselves to a policy of non-exploitation of the East.
