Rumors and Gossip are Fun (Until Someone Loses an Eye)

If there's one thing I don't understand (one of many, anyway) it's how people can fall for the same silly rumors over and over again.  I'm always astounded when, say, someone claims to have information about something they couldn't possibly know about.  Would you believe someone if they claimed to know who the president of the United States was going to be five years from now?  Of course not. How could they know that?  They couldn't.  Yet, those same people line up to believe that mystery person x (and it's always a mystery person) knows when Britney Spears' new album is coming out, what it's going to be called, the name of the first single, etc.  But isn't believing that just as foolish as believing the person who claims to know who the next president is going to be?
We build this timeline of events in our mind of how something is going to go.  For instance, on a first date, you've already mapped out the entire date in your mind before you even sat down to dinner.  If someone came buy and told you how the date was going to go, and if that information matched up with your self-created timeline, you'd buy it.  It's the same with Britney.  We have a general timeline set for when we feel things are going to happen, and if someone comes along and claims data that matches, well, we're standing there in line waiting to hear more.
Human beings need structure to function: things have to happen in a certain order.  You date, fall in love, get married, have kids.  A system.  We have a tendency to force feed our system onto others, i.e. telling people the rumor about Britney's next album coming out on Sept. 13 is true simply because we already created that timeline in our minds.
We stop thinking rationally when the rumored information matches our preconceived information.  And that's a problem.  Thinking is very important.  My advice is simply to look things over, removing all preconceived notions, before arriving at a final decision.  You may decide to believe the rumor in the end, but not because it jibes with your self-created timeline; rather, because you've deduced there's actual truth in there.
I guess I DO understand how people can fall for the same silly rumors after all.