Three Men Make a Tiger

Three Men Make a Tiger sounds like a ridiculous idiom, but our society follows this completely.  Facebook is a notorious for having fake news and getting it put out there on the main pages.  When people see that thousands of others have shared an article, most will not think twice of whether it is legitimate or not.  This idiom comes from a Chinese story about a King explaining that if one or two people said they saw a tiger cross then he would not believe them but if three people told him, then he could believe them.   Going along with the Facebook idea, when people see a profile with two friends, it’s often seen as that profile is not real.  And this of course may be the case but we base it on the amount of numbers we see.  And if people see a profile with many friends then they don’t think anything of it.  The reassurance from others is needed for society.  It is almost unavoidable and programmed because of how we have been functioning for so long as a society, socially.  

Ethos tells us to find credibility but our habit is often to trust, especially with things on the Internet.  Everyone tells us to not believe everything on the Internet but so man fall victim to these fake news sources and many other fake things on the internet.  Facebook also uses pathos by incorporating emotion with what they are trying to make the public believe with the fake articles.  I too have even been one to believe things that I have seen on Facebook but I have become a lot wearier.  No one wants to bee seen as unintelligent so it up to us to use logos and use logic in order to make others aware.  All in all, the fallacy of Three Men Make a Tiger is continuous and most likely will always be because it is impossible to make everyone questions everything and not rely on what others tell them.

Source: http://www.uchinavisa.com/three-men-make-a-tiger.html