Alt Text: How to Tell Real SEALs From Basement-Dwelling Posers

On the internet, it can be difficult to separate actual soldiers from impostors. Here’s how to go on poser patrol.
Image: iStockphoto

The White House recently congratulated the makers of Troop ID, a service designed to help online merchants securely identify members of the armed forces. This was a significant recommendation, the first software application to be publicly praised by the president since he canceled a 2009 press conference in order to play Doodle Jump.

While I’m happy that troops will be able to claim their 10 percent discount on water bottles and mock turtlenecks, I’m a bit disappointed that the service is apparently only being used in a retail context. After the whole Stolen Valor saga, you’d think there’d be a huge demand for a secure way to vet self-described vets.

Here’s a statistic: While there are only 2,500 active-duty Navy SEALs at any given time, there are approximately 4 million people claiming to be current or former Navy SEALs in various chat rooms and message boards on the internet. This is because any argument is 200 percent more convincing when presented by a Navy SEAL.

A couple of examples:

Unconvincing: “As a mall food court assistant supervisor, I believe that our mission in Afghanistan is necessary to the stability of the Middle East.”
Convincing: “As a Navy SEAL, I believe that our mission in Afghanistan is necessary to the stability of the Middle East.”

Unconvincing: “As a teaching assistant in comparative literature, I believe that The Silmarillion is vastly overrated by Tolkien fans.”
Convincing: “As a Navy SEAL, I believe that The Silmarillion is vastly overrated by Tolkien fans.”

With results like that, it’s no wonder that people are attempting to fraudulently win arguments by pretending to be members of elite military squads like the SEALs, the Green Berets, the Army Rangers and occasionally G.I. Joe. It seems to me that Troop ID could be used to distinguish the Special Forces from the basement-dwelling posers.

Once we have that technology in place, we could easily expand it to ferret out other internet pretenders. For instance, before you claim that you’re going to show up at someone’s house and beat them up, or argue that you’d have a mugger in a headlock before he could say “hand over the cash,” you’d be expected to use the ToughGuy ID service to certify that you have actually, at some point, won a fight that wasn’t against a sibling at least four years younger than you.

Our founding fathers created the First Amendment protections on free speech for a good reason: because it’s freaking hilarious.

Or before you can declare that the solution to the “fiscal cliff” crisis is obvious to anyone who knows anything about economics, you’d be expected to provide proof to Expert ID that your main credentials in economics aren’t limited to having seen both Atlas Shrugged movies.

I say “expected to” because I’m not saying that you would have to sign up for these services. Goodness no, my ludicrous and improbable fantasies aren’t that tyrannical. I believe that our founding fathers created the First Amendment protections on free speech for a good reason: because it’s freaking hilarious. There’s nothing more fun than watching someone weave ever-more-desperate lies to cover up their unwillingness to either put, or shut, up.

However, I do think there’s one vital concern that overrides the right to free speech: Before commenting on a humor column on the web, everyone should be required to take a simple test that would confirm that they have the basic human ability to recognize sarcasm and hyperbole.

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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a commando, a commandant and a cormorant