Yall, When it comes to social media I really dont have that many pet peeves. Sure, I sometimes get slightly exhausted by the non-stop Instagram food-bragging picks, inspirational messages from tea lids, and quiz revelations about which color gummy bear you are. But in the end those are just the kinds of boring day-to-day annoyances people have with each other IRL, so why would our interactions be any different online? We all struggle with bad netiquette because this Internet thing is still fairly new, and us apes need a couple more generations of stick-poking to figure out what exactly to do with it. No harm if your social media presence is annoyingly trite. At the end of the day you are still a decent person who hasnt done anything wrong (that I know of). There is one bad social media habit that I really have a serious issue with though, and that habit is the careless dissemination of misinformation. Im not referring to stuff that people might disagree on politically/spiritually/ethically. I just mean good old fashioned non-facts. The *majority* of the people in my Facebook feed are spreading this stuff like a disease, and it seems to be getting worse each day rather than better. Case in point is the story of the pit bull-mauled girl who was allegedly kicked out of KFC for scaring the customers with her gnarled face. The headline was infuriating, which was all that was needed to make millions of people passionately share it here. KFC is the new Kony. Little Victoria and her family are the new Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker. Today we are learning that, just like those other explosively viral phenomenons, there is more to the story than its stupid, unlikely summary. Not only was that story implausible, it was also devoid of any substantiating facts whatsoever. No specific franchise location. No manager names. No witnesses. Nothing. I can only assume so many intelligent people shared this non-story as outrageous fact because they stopped reading after the headline. Every single day I watch hundreds of my college-educated friends, even a few university professors, spew misinformation for no other reason than it being easy and something to do. STOP DOING THAT ISH. I have very little to discuss with dumdums, which is why most of my IRL friends and Facebook friends are smart, educated folks. I know you guys are smart enough to read a news article with active discernment. I know you were taught to cross-reference sources. I KNOW YOU HAVE INTERNET ACCESS WHICH MEANS YOU CAN INSTANTLY FACT CHECK ANYTHING YOU READ. So why are yall sharing news faster than you can read it, science faster than you can research it, and history faster than you could cough at a Wikipedia article? And why for the love of god would anyone ever share an unread article with the caveat of Havent read this yet so I dont know if its real. Just bookmarking for later! ????????????? ಠ_ಠ YOU GUYS. We literally have at our fingertips, the majority of all documented human knowledge, for FREE. In the past most people wouldnt even have dreamed of this as a possibility. You have been gifted with a library of more facts, research, and information than you could ever scratch the surface of - most of it just a Google search away. You have no excuse, ever, for not researching the content you share. The fact that you take the time to push out content of any kind to people who care about you indicates that you think those people should care about your content as well. Dont tell people to care about something you couldnt even be bothered to read. - If you SHARE it, you also ENDORSE it. - YOU GUYS. Just a few years ago the only way ones voice or ideas could be heard by the world was by climbing to the top of a tightly-controlled, insurmountable-for-most, mass media empire. We no longer need talent or good looks or wealth now to publicly broadcast our words and actions. We just need an Internet connection. THIS IS A GIFT! This is an opportunity that billions and billions of people before us never had access to. Dont squander it. Sharing content that you havent read or researched is squandering an incredible gift. Its a stupid, harmful phenomenon perpetuated by a lot of smart people out of laziness, boredom, and sheer narcissism. Its the result of millions of people deciding I want to be heard, but I dont have anything notable to say right now. These 15 links I glanced at during breakfast can speak for me. You guys, yall DO have something original to say. I dont really care about your boring AF baby pictures, your pretentious AF farmers market salad, or your uninteresting AF sports teams. But I will take those things over your unread news articles every single day. I would rather look at 50,000 close up flickr photos of your not-as-cute-as-most-cats cat than read your falsely-attributed Nikola Tesla quote JPEG. I am friends with you on here because I want to learn about YOUR thoughts/loves/aspirations/dvd collections/ugly cousins/fad diets/personal anythings. I want to study the pictures on your fridge but instead you keep passing me your junkmail. WTF, man. Did I explain this clearly enough? If you have something insightful or interesting to say that reflects your unique perspective on a subject, sharing that stuff on social media makes the world a better place for having you part of it. If you have nothing exciting to share but still want attention, sharing the minutia of your daily existence can be annoying but ultimately doesnt harm anyone. But if you have nothing interesting to say and still opt for clicking the share button on something you havent even read, simply for that false, warming fulfillment of having communicated, YOU ARE THE WORST. You are turning a platform with unlimited potential for knowledge and education and coordination into a tool for keeping people in the dark, you jerk! STOP IT. >:( /end_rant 1 Like = 1 Prayer
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 06:01:02 +0000
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