[sillysaurusx]

But there are real wolves when shepherding too. That’s why crying wolf has any power.

To cry wolf is to say there’s a wolf here when it’s actually located elsewhere. The AI photo said there was a wolf at a certain intersection when it was actually located elsewhere.

In fact crying wolf is doubly appropriate because it means disturbing an operation looking for a wolf.

[psychoslave]

The biggest difference now is wolf is actually sought to protect him¹ from the crowd of the super-predators in town, so they can "give him a calm environment for recovery".

¹ Following pronoun variant used in the fine article here.

[croes]

Crying wolf is normally starting the operation while there isn‘t a wolf.

This is misdirection while there is a wolf

Similar but different

[weird-eye-issue]

That's completely pedantic and besides it's false because there literally wasn't a wolf there where he faked the photo in the first place

[bryanrasmussen]

what if the real criers of wolves were the sheeple we misled along the way?

[croes]

Crying wolf is crying for help when there is no danger not when there is a danger just at different place.

That's not pedantic, that's the meaning of the idiom.

[fc417fc802]

If you stipulate that everyone must be relaxing at the time, sure. But the core concept of crying wolf is IMO simply a false alert with no particular constraints placed on those responding. I think in this case it simultaneously qualifies as crying wolf as well as misdirection.

[croes]

But this isn't a false alert. The alert is real, people just got misdirected.

[weird-eye-issue]

It was a false alert in that particular place. I doubt those residents who were alerted had felt like they were previously in immediate danger.

[fc417fc802]

Well it's definitely a false alert but I think maybe I see what's bugging you. If an enemy agent intentionally did that with the goal of disrupting operations we'd call it misdirection and it seems a bit silly in that scenario to also categorize it as crying wolf. Since there's an ongoing search that the guy was aware of you view this the same way.

But have you considered that the criteria arose organically as opposed to being engineered top down to account for edge cases such as this? I think in practice the term can probably apply to any instance where you might consider the longer term reputation of an individual or group that is separate from the response team.

Basically you've decided the two things must be mutually exclusive but haven't provided any reasoning or precedent for that constraint.

[sebastiennight]

Think of it like this: if this same story was happening a couple of centuries ago, pre-Internet, this person who just got arrested would have been sitting at their balcony, crying "the wolf is here! down at the intersection!" ; causing the hunting team to waste time.

[DANmode]

Must not have paid close attention to the details of the story.

[tokai]

You don't get to chose pedanticism when it suits you. Please stop.

[weird-eye-issue]

This is real life there's always a danger just at a different place.

[heliumtera]

le reddit mentality