Fake News, Fake News, Read All About It
Everywhere I look, no where is safe anymore. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Buzzfeed, no matter where you I anymore, I can't be too sure about what is real and what is fake?
A good example of this is something that recently happened on Twitter. I encountered a video of a group of Indians destroying solar panels. The caption to the video said that these people were destroying these panels because it was angering their Sun gods. These panels were absorbing all the light and the Indians were insulted. Interesting. The further and longer I scrolled on Twitter, the same video came up, but this time, with a different caption. This time the caption said that the Indians were destroying these panels because they had spent all this time working on putting them together for this company, just for the company to turn around and say that they were not going to pay them for their labor. This enraged the workers leading them to destroy all their hard work in protest. Which story was true?
The second story. The second story was true, but before I knew that I was naive enough to believe that maybe the Indians were mad for their Sun Gods.
It makes me mad that we live in a society where we can't trust what we read anymore without having to fact-check anything, but maybe that's a good thing. Why? Because it's teaching us that we need to learn to take the extra steps to see what is true and what is not. It's teaching us to stop being so gullible, stop looking stupid, and start researching before clicking share. It's kind of like thinking before you speak, but unfortunately, no one does that either anymore.
A good example of this is something that recently happened on Twitter. I encountered a video of a group of Indians destroying solar panels. The caption to the video said that these people were destroying these panels because it was angering their Sun gods. These panels were absorbing all the light and the Indians were insulted. Interesting. The further and longer I scrolled on Twitter, the same video came up, but this time, with a different caption. This time the caption said that the Indians were destroying these panels because they had spent all this time working on putting them together for this company, just for the company to turn around and say that they were not going to pay them for their labor. This enraged the workers leading them to destroy all their hard work in protest. Which story was true?
The second story. The second story was true, but before I knew that I was naive enough to believe that maybe the Indians were mad for their Sun Gods.
It makes me mad that we live in a society where we can't trust what we read anymore without having to fact-check anything, but maybe that's a good thing. Why? Because it's teaching us that we need to learn to take the extra steps to see what is true and what is not. It's teaching us to stop being so gullible, stop looking stupid, and start researching before clicking share. It's kind of like thinking before you speak, but unfortunately, no one does that either anymore.