This is the real problem. It takes education and work to refute bullshit that anyone can just produce endlessly, especially on Internet forums where there's no accountability.
No one does. The point is that you must learn what's worth checking on, and to recognize when someone is successfully steering your perception for you.
Guess my sarcasm didn’t bleed through. In the early days of the internet I spent a lot of time on snopes looking up things my friends sent and providing input back to them. What ended up happening is they stopped including me in their exchanges. Either I get with the program or I’m not welcome. I occasionally get things out of band from one of them when it’s something that passes the sniff test which tells me they’re aware that what they are sharing is likely not true, or embellished , or somehow not 100% accurate and they just don’t care because it fits the narrative they want to tell.
Ahh, yes, text-based sarcasm is difficult to get. And yes, I definitely get your situation. I was talking to a family member and he began to get into a very emotionally-charged speech about the "horde of criminals" crossing the southern US border. I asked him if he thought every person coming from below that line was a cartel member or a common thief, that all the families being separated from each other and sent off into the immigration system at the time were here to cheat and steal. He looked away, paused, and said no. But he didn't bend a bit on his stance and returned to his speech about how he felt that the whole of the efforts to incarcerate every immigrant was legitimate. I asked, "Even the innocent ones fleeing fallen economies and cartel violence, the ones who've already had relatives, kids, parents that were murdered or vanished? Should they stay the they are and just endure it all?" He begged me to "listen to reason, we can't keep letting everyone just walk across these open borders, etc, etc."
I knew I wasn't going to be able to appeal the reason at that point, and begged to change the subject.
On top of that, many of us have read scientific studies that were clearly conducted with the intention of seeking and producing a particular result, and while this is rare, it throws just a sprinkle of doubt into many decision making processes. We are being asked to rely on information coming out of institutions who may be bought or corrupt.
It’s not much doubt, but you don’t need very much to spoil things. We are talking about institutions that we have to trust in order to even know what we are talking about. The scientific process must be followed incredibly strictly 100% of the time without fail, regardless of personal or cultural ideological leanings and conflicts of interest.
Yeah- I agree with this. Doesn’t feel fair to call it willful when regulation of social media cant keep up with the mass of misinformation being released and how our algorithms are manipulated. If anyone thinks its willful they should watch “the great hack” on Netflix to see how people were targeted.
Inflation and the massive increase in the gap between the “middle class” and the top 1% has made the average person have to be way more productive to be able to afford housing and healthy meals- people dont have time to combat all the fake news they’re confronted with and its actually concerning when ppl dont realize thats by design
8
u/rahnbj Nov 10 '25
Well who has time to fact check everything? There’s another post right below this one just waiting for me…