There's a phenomena that I think is related, which is for a lot of people it's really hard to say "I don't know" even though, of course, nobody knows the answer to everything.
Similarly, everyone will mistake something false for being true at least on rare occasion, and it's important to be intellectually honest about those mistakes. The ivermectin tweet was one that momentarily got through my filters, granted only for about a minute, as it was retweeted by someone I don't expect to share misinformation. But I quickly caught it, and corrected myself, and hopefully it will improve my filters in the future.
Because how else can you learn? I guess that's the problem. A lot of people don't, and it's making things pretty bad.
Unrelated I wonder if the "quotetweet your friends, screenshot your enemies" thing might be a problem with regard to this as of course you can fabricate a screenshot, but not a tweet (aside from impersonating an account).
Oh totally! This! Absolutely. One thing I've been trying to get better about in recent years is acknowledging when I just don't know wtf I'm talking about.
I was just thinking last night about how in college I read a completely wild article on Snopes claiming that Mister Ed was actually played by a zebra (it's still up and was a deliberate joke by the Snopes team back when they mostly focused on urban legends: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mister-ed-zebra/). It was Snopes so I totally bought it! For, like, several years! Until I enthusiastically mentioned this fun bit of trivia at a party and my friends looked at me like I'd lost my mind and we looked it up. I get viscerally embarrassed whenever I think about it but now I think I'm going to try to blame society instead
I’m going to disagree with this one. I think falling for fake stories does say something about society (and social media): social media companies make it way too easy to let lies go viral. Yes, perhaps there needs to be a new form of internet literacy so that people are better equipped to identify fake stuff from the real, but currently, no healthy person assumes people are lying to them all the time. Does it make me gullible if I believe a stranger when they say something totally believable about themselves, but it turns out to be untrue? We assume good intentions of people in the real world. The internet is being ruined by a small contingent of sociopaths.
But we are all aware that there are malicious actors on every online platform. If you just share and repost stuff without verifying it at all that's on you. Yes it makes you gullible.
All I can really think about right now is how outraged Christina Pushaw would have been if she saw the January '73 issue of National Lampoon on a newsstand. I'm trying not to think TOO hard about it, I just want to laugh at a dumb person thinking a fake magazine is real.
I got called out once for sharing a false meme and it made me really paranoid -- and then I found myself repeatedly calling out my liberal friends for sharing nonsense. I was already calling out my conservative friends for sharing nonsense. The big difference was that when I called out my liberal friends, they generally apologized and thanked me for keeping them honest... I think you can imagine how my conservative friends reacted...?
There's a phenomena that I think is related, which is for a lot of people it's really hard to say "I don't know" even though, of course, nobody knows the answer to everything.
Similarly, everyone will mistake something false for being true at least on rare occasion, and it's important to be intellectually honest about those mistakes. The ivermectin tweet was one that momentarily got through my filters, granted only for about a minute, as it was retweeted by someone I don't expect to share misinformation. But I quickly caught it, and corrected myself, and hopefully it will improve my filters in the future.
Because how else can you learn? I guess that's the problem. A lot of people don't, and it's making things pretty bad.
Unrelated I wonder if the "quotetweet your friends, screenshot your enemies" thing might be a problem with regard to this as of course you can fabricate a screenshot, but not a tweet (aside from impersonating an account).
Oh totally! This! Absolutely. One thing I've been trying to get better about in recent years is acknowledging when I just don't know wtf I'm talking about.
I was just thinking last night about how in college I read a completely wild article on Snopes claiming that Mister Ed was actually played by a zebra (it's still up and was a deliberate joke by the Snopes team back when they mostly focused on urban legends: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mister-ed-zebra/). It was Snopes so I totally bought it! For, like, several years! Until I enthusiastically mentioned this fun bit of trivia at a party and my friends looked at me like I'd lost my mind and we looked it up. I get viscerally embarrassed whenever I think about it but now I think I'm going to try to blame society instead
Oh, those were the days, back when Snopes was mostly urban legend type stuff.
I’m going to disagree with this one. I think falling for fake stories does say something about society (and social media): social media companies make it way too easy to let lies go viral. Yes, perhaps there needs to be a new form of internet literacy so that people are better equipped to identify fake stuff from the real, but currently, no healthy person assumes people are lying to them all the time. Does it make me gullible if I believe a stranger when they say something totally believable about themselves, but it turns out to be untrue? We assume good intentions of people in the real world. The internet is being ruined by a small contingent of sociopaths.
These are fair points! I really appreciate this feedback!
But we are all aware that there are malicious actors on every online platform. If you just share and repost stuff without verifying it at all that's on you. Yes it makes you gullible.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s what “gullible” means.
All I can really think about right now is how outraged Christina Pushaw would have been if she saw the January '73 issue of National Lampoon on a newsstand. I'm trying not to think TOO hard about it, I just want to laugh at a dumb person thinking a fake magazine is real.
I got called out once for sharing a false meme and it made me really paranoid -- and then I found myself repeatedly calling out my liberal friends for sharing nonsense. I was already calling out my conservative friends for sharing nonsense. The big difference was that when I called out my liberal friends, they generally apologized and thanked me for keeping them honest... I think you can imagine how my conservative friends reacted...?
Unrelated to meat of the piece, but I can no longer hear what a fool believes without thinking of this short. https://youtu.be/pkizL1oyYQc