Saying: “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Reality: If you try this out, you’ll find that you actually attract more flies with a vinegar because it smells closer to what flies naturally consume. Flies are thus more attracted to vinegar, as it turns out!
Objection: Hold on there, Reality. The saying isn’t that you attract more flies with honey; it’s that you catch more flies with honey. While you’re correct that flies are attracted to vinegar, a fly is unlikely to be trapped if you lay out a bowl of vinegar; more likely they’ll take a sip and fly off. By contrast, it’s very likely that they’ll get caught in a bowl of sticky honey and be unable to free themselves. Thus, the original saying is already correct!
Reality: Oh, come off it, that’s getting pointlessly technical. Sure, you could argue that honey is more likely to form an inescapable trap, but by that logic you could say that you catch more flies with glue than with vinegar. The point of the saying is clearly to imply that flies are more likely to come to you if you use honey, which simply isn’t true!
Objection: Actually, Reality, your initial data seems off to begin with; the question of whether vinegar will attract more flies is debated, especially when a pile of dung attracts more flies than either substance under discussion. You’re spreading dubious information from half-remembered sources in an effort to punch holes in something that is ultimately a harmless diversion.
Reality: That’s an absurd reaction, given that the likelihood of one piece of correction isn’t going to dislodge the cultural weight of the expression. And for that matter, why do we need the falsehood? Why isn’t enough to say that it’s good to treat people decently instead of being a jerk, regardless of how the common fly behaves? Why does it need to be a trite expression?
Objection: I’m just saying that if you want to be pedantic and correct facts, it’s important to be accurately pedantic! If you’re going to hold up accuracy as the primary goal here, why not correct objectively unambiguous falsehoods like the whole “glass is a liquid” nonsense?
Reality: Because the whole theme here is that we’re debunking a set of common aphorisms that don’t
Bonus question: What’s been the hardest positive secret to keep that you can think of?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): I’ll be covering Summer Game Fest and the on-site media portion of it so that stuff is hush hush, but I hope to get in at least a little time for Goomy Community Day (just a few minutes, Bree!) and the Big Big Run in Splatoon 3 (just a few hours on Friday, Bree!).
My puppy has a box of Star Wars dog toys waiting for her. I only gave her two but it’s been so hard not to just give them all to her!
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): This is not gonna be a great weekend for playing games, what with SGF and all, but I’ve been in City of Heroes and a few other small things, so we’ll see if that extends.
I don’t have a hard time keeping the big secrets; we deal with endless embargos and stuff and I’m just used to that, plus I love knowing how excited everyone will be when they find out the Thing. What I have a hard time with is remembering whether things I got told 10 years ago were supposed to be secrets. It’s why half the time I’d just rather not know too much on background. Keeping it all straight forever is too much.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): I’m going to keep on keepin’ on in The Elder Scrolls Online for the most part, but I’m also considering diving through my single-player back catalog to find some things to play. Honestly, I’m just padding my time until Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail at this point. Help.
It has been quite some time since I’ve had occasion to hold back a big positive secret, but the most recent was a few years ago when I confirmed to my husband that he was going to be getting a proper gaming PC; before that point he was pretty much chained to the PS4 and only had a beat-up Mac laptop from his college days, so being able to confirm that for him was pretty great.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): It’s a really busy weekend for me including a couple of important appointments but also including a really important game demo that I’ll be trying out. (It has nothing to do with this site, honestly; y’all saw my FFXIV media tour coverage.)
When I got to go on the Stormblood media tour, my FFXIV friends consisted of several people who were super hype about getting to play Red Mage and several people who were super hype about Samurai. I obviously played both and got a feel for them, and I immediately felt like both of them were going to be big hits with those friends… but I couldn’t tell them about it for a painfully long time. (No, I don’t break embargo dates for my friends.) I was super excited to tell them all about it, but I had to wait.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): The new season of Harry Potter: Magic Awakened began this past week so I’m trying to knock out those achievements. Also the return/release of MultiVersus has really got my blood hot. The battles are as fun as ever, although the amount of limited time PvE achievements is kind of annoying.
Bonus: I think the best I’ve got is when we surprised our kids with a Disney trip. We kept it a surprise up until the night before we left. We had a big box delivered for them filled with Disney loot and balloons. When they got to the bottom and saw tickets and suitcase tags it hit them that this wasn’t just loot, this is a whole trip. Told them to get packing we leave in the morning. It was a magical time.
Tyler Edwards (blog): My World of Warcraft sub runs out on Monday, so I’ll be doing some final tasks in Pandaria remix. I’ve maxed out a Paladin and a Hunter, and my Death Knight is almost there. Just farming transmogs otherwise. I might also fit in some New World or Heroes of the Storm.
Every Saturday, join the Massively OP community and staff for What Are You Playing, our roundup of what MMORPGs and other games we’re hoping to play this weekend (with a bonus question or two for our amusement). Tell us what you’re up to! Go off-topic! And don’t forget to have fun!
