Facebook Rant

It is puzzling why even supposedly intelligent people still believe most everything they see on the internet. Makes no difference how many times someone tells them what they are copying and pasting is false or a hoax they just keep doing it. Very annoying!
I keep up with some family and friends across the country with Facebook but have had to unfollow a few for this very reason.

 

The only social media I used to do was My Space and we all know where that went..... although my kids do Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Viber, Whats App and anything else that is trendy. All I can say is their phones and tablets are going off non stop with new posts from their chosen newsfeeds and friend posts. From what I have observed most posts are irrelevant rubbish and the kids and their friends seem to be in the habit of continually checking their phones and tablets in case they have missed something or haven't replied to someone's post within 5 minutes.

@LauraR amongst some of the stuff my kids have shown me, there have been many things set out to look like a news article but not attributed to any known newspaper or magazine source and thus usually can't be verified for accuracy. This seems to be the way a lot of new information is getting out to young people and whether it is factually right or wrong doesn't seem to bother anybody. A lot of young people tend to believe stuff they read so accept it as true without properly checking the facts and this leads to fundamental misunderstandings where people who actually know the correct facts get shouted down by a larger majority of misinformed people who don't believe the story they read could possibly be wrong. These days my kids rarely read newspapers or watch the news on TV because they reckon it is over sensationalised and many of the stories are twisted for greater dramatic effect to improve network ratings or increase advertising revenue.
Sad to think social media may be the future of news

 

What plodr said, that's me too! Let's face it, headlines sell. Details don't; they are too boring. Mainstream media frustrates me to no end in this
vein. Somebody please "confuse me with the facts!"

 

Some people will believe many things posted on social media sites simply because mainstream media (ie the big corporate media outfits) has been shown to be so unreliable. The 'Red Tops' print factually incorrect stuff all the time, their online and TV stable members do exactly the same. Social media isn't to blame for that, and a far greater amount of truth does come out of the alternative media than the mainstream. The proof of that is abundant.

 

I saw the native American demonstrations and blockades reported quite widely in mainstream media.

 

I have found, from personal experience, that a very easy way to stop this from happening to you is to do a reply-all and educate the people the email was forwarded to, on how easy it was for me to verify that the alarmistic claim in the original email is false and how I did it. I make sure I include lots of sarcasm about the very small number of seconds it took me, how the information that proved this is a non-issue was out in the open and thus very easy to find if one bothered to look for it.

And I'm sure it surprises no one here that I also tend to end my reply-all response to these things with stating that smart people who take the time to actually try to think on their own and apply common sense to what they see online, rather than just blindly believe everything that has exclamations points in the subject line, would have realized that this is a hoax that absolutely should not be used as an excuse to spam everyone in their contact list. The phrase "only an idiot believes everything they read on the internet" frequently makes an appearance at this point.

Whether this have taught he compulsory headline forwarders the error of their ways or not, I don't know. But if they're still doing it, they're at least no longer doing it to me, and that's all I care about. If they want to choose to stay ignorant and uninformed, that's their problem, and helping them out the day this ignorance gets them in trouble, is not my job.

And it's not just "young people", by the way. To be honest, I think that's an unfair stereotype - most of the members of the generation that grew up with the internet know how to navigate it a lot more than anyone who first encountered it as an adult. In fact, the by far worst offenders of this, in my Facebook feed as well as in my email, are from my parents generation or just a bit younger than that.

 

Generally I hate commercials, but a few are entertaining. bonjour!

 

Speaking of ads I get a laugh out of the dude trying to be cool