Social Media, The Holy Grail of Pseudo Knowledge
Whether we like this or not social media is the new way of interaction for some good years now and it seems to get stronger and stronger with every new app and platform that wins the eyes and the heart of its new users. Apps like Facebook, twitter and Reddit contain in their "ledgers" not only personal moments of certain users shared along with some pics to prove that much happiness and joy that they experience, because it's mostly about that, but also some good amount of knowledge, facts, numbers and names that are offered for free in never ending forum conversations and verbal disputes.
However from my own experience and not only there aren't just a few occasions when such shared knowledge is complete crap rather than anything useful...for anybody. Thus, I asked myself why is this happening and the first thing that got to my mind was Bitcoin. It might seem weird the analogy with the "king of cryptos", but in my humble opinion the only thing that took its price to the $20,000 mark last year was the demand. That big hyped demand that drove people crazy paying with a small car for a cryptocurrency. When something/anything has high demand, whether from one person or more, it grows in value. By the way, I could have given the example of iPhones also, but I am not of a fan of them so I just stick with Bitcoin.
Coming back to my freewrite topic for today, the social media pseudo knowledge, I consider that the demand for such knowledge is the number one factor influencing its growth. People want it, they are eager for it, but they also like the easy and short way in anything. It's easy to open a laptop or a smartphone and start google a topic or browse through your Facebook feed to search for a reason on why electric cars are becoming a thing just for a few years when the technology was here for years. It's easier to watch the movie than to read the book. Or watch others movies on forums and believe that those are facts and you could rely on when you shouldn't. It's as easy also to forget.
Years ago when internet wasn't that rich in info, of any type, the best and most trusted source for any piece of knowledge one searched for was...a book or two. Now, books are also written by an author or multiple ones, which are also humans like the ones being active on forums, but too often they are entitled by their knowledge to inform you and guide you by reading their books. They could even be invited to an argument fight when some facts might seem distorted through their material. Thus I consider books and websites sharing knowledge, of any kind, based on books as the most trusted ways of learning. At least that's how I see things through my classic mind, routed in paper pages and authors to grant for their words.
Nowadays very often I get to hear the reply during a discussion that "I read that on a forum". In my opinion forums are not entitled and trustworthy in any way to consider them an objective source of information and another example that comes to my mind right now about how valuable such pieces of info are is the crypto twitter and reddit groups and forums where you can get a lot of trading tips from and really have the opportunity of your life to get rekt like you never had before and loose a lot of money. I am interested also in learning how to trade, but I'd rather buy some books, which I will ultimately do for that, rather than open my ears to people who write on social media platform and forums using a Mickey Mouse badge on their profile pic and wear a name ending with crypto. They don't even show their face... Well, neither Satoshi Nakamoto did, but at least his/her Bitcoin works and it has a white paper too, so beat that Mickey Mouse.
Making an end to my post I will not say that I don't use twitter or that I don't read on forums, but I also consider 99% of the info out there second hand knowledge not to rely on. Pieces of info that might have a kernel in it, but very much distorted through the mouth to mouth channels of communication that the social media websites have become. I do understand the people doing that also. It's much more easy to listen to others and walk on the easy path to get informed ending nowhere than to make your own with valuable and trustworthy information. Digging, spending money, thinking, comparing and building your own rather than borrowing others takes time, but Rome wasn't build over night.
That's how the pseudo knowledge is born, spread around and thrives against the authentic one. Through us, the ones in demand of it.
Thanks for your attention