Wednesday, June 22, 2016

I've been filling up facebook with my rambling and tirades.  They revolve around the absolute idiotic tendency of people to pass information that is half or totally not true.  I tell myself let it go but then I see all these other people in the amen corner and, well next thing you know my finger is swiping on the keyboard.  

When I see things that call to my emotions, I research it.  Mostly I do.  Sometimes I share simply because I don't really care.  Sometimes I share just to see what sort of rise I can get out of the people in my friends' list.  I don't share news stories unless they come from an established news outlet like the national media or well known newspapers.  I'm even skeptical of Politico, Breibart and Huffington Post.  These other fly by night internet rags are out there just because some dude majored in journalism (a dying field) and sits in his mom's basement inciting a riot over bs.  Ok maybe that's harsh but really. Anybody can clip and cut video with software found on the internet.  They are good for taking a printed story and using parts of it out of context.  People eat it up.  It's amazing to me how many people believe things simply because it's on some official looking news site but claim others are blind and naive.  Hilarious.

My rule of thumb is, if a hundred percent of the story is my exact opinion or feeds more into something I detest, then it's probably not worth believing.  I will go look for other stories to corroborate or disprove what I read.  It's not that hard.  Thirty seconds of typing to get a hundred links.  

But people are happy in their ignorance and they can't or refuse to see the other side.