Spreading Fake News...
We have all seen it before. Your dumb friend or family member posts something that is 100% not true. I’m not talking about an opinion piece...I’m talking about straight up fabricated horseshit.
Well I have a few friends like that on Facebook and my recent frustration with them is off the charts. I don’t mind someone having difference of opinion. I think that’s great. Hearing both sides of an argument is personally important for me I feel...even if I disagree with parts. What I hate is when someone is spreading the dreaded term of “Fake News”!!!
I had some friends recently spreading a screenshot from Reddit regarding Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The post comes from someone who claims they are a nurse and that RBG is in a coma and barely clinging to life. It also claims that “the Dems” are keeping her alive so that President Trump cannot pick another Justice and blah blah blah. They were even so kind as to provide a pic that looks like it was taken with my Motorola Startec from 2001.
Now most rational people would read this anonymous poster’s nonsense and dismiss it. But not my friends. They ran with this....then their friends ran with it and so on. I saw this horseshit posted by 3 of my friends within 24 hours and each one of their feeds had tons of their crazy friends commenting and sharing their thoughts and the actual story.
Well it turns out RBG was spotted at an event last evening. Not dead. Not in a coma. But alive and enjoying a concert featuring her daughter in law, just locks from the White House. Know how many of my 3 friends admitted they were wrong for spreading horseshit?!? Take a guess...
If you guessed 0, then you are correct. That is my problem with social media. I guess we can’t stop the horseshit from being spread and I’m not sure if I want to even if we could. While I hate the idea of it, I hate the idea of suppressing speech even more. What bothers me is how quick people are to spread the sensational stories yet are always so reluctant to admit when they are wrong or have been duped.
This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself looking at my friends ignoring the facts and running with a sensational story as it fits their agenda. I think I’m just so irritated at it. The thing that set me off the most was a few months back, my buddy posted a completely false story that I debunked in a matter of 45 seconds. I posted to his page with a link that proved what he was claiming was untrue. He then proceeded to hide my comment and ignore it completely. That means he knew it was horseshit and ran with it anyway. Argh!!!!!!
Anyone else have this problem or let this shit get to them or is it just me?!? Have you ever passed along a story that was later debunked? If so, how did you handle it afterwards? Let’s duscuss...and please, keep it civil. 😉
Blewitt
My aunty and mother in law BOTH shared cute memes that were put out by right wing nationalists - I messaged them and told them to look at source of meme before posting, as by sharing it, they were supporting their hate bullshit. They were mortified, apologised, and deleted it from their feeds. Other times I've merely posted the 'SNOPES' expose under the fake news in the comments and just let them sit with that.
Oh my guys state snopes is a biased leftist vehicle so they won’t acknowledge it at all.
Haha. I had a friend send me a thing via text today saying if you have red in your banana, it's been infected by HIV. OH MY FUCKING GOD.
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Howdy sir blewitt! That is disturbing indeed. What a place to get your news! After a few of those incidents I hope they would do some research before passing the junk on.
And why is this type of horseshit almost always either Politically or Religiously motivated? Occasionally racially, but usually the other two.
Yeah. Basically anything that can be controversial. What bugs me too is that someone is out there making false shot up kniwibg it’s gonna be lapped up by uninformed dummies.
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Delete Facebook, and probably those "dumb" friends It won't be an issue then. Easy.
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Wish I could but I use it for the business. Plus I do still communicate with friends and family around the globe. I should at least unfollow them so their insanity does not pop up in my feed.
Yeah, I figured it was a shop thing. Makes sense. Yeah, unfollow the dum dums though 😁
I got rid of my Facebook 12 months ago. Best thing ever. I have family in Europe, we communicate through WhatsApp. I don't need to put up with all the shite on FB now. So liberating.
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Yeah it seems very rewarding to a degree. I’m just going to unfollow certain people so I’m not tempted to get into it when their insanity pops up on my feed. Not unfriendly. Just unfollow.
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...in the age of the social media, things are gonna be incorrect - a lot.
What's a worrying trend, is for people to refuse to say 'oh, I fucked that one', or 'sorry, I go that wrong'.
..this is a far more worrying a trend, than the actual incorrect information, in my opinion..
Truth. I just get super frustrated at my friends that never acknowledge when they are incorrect. It’s ok to be wrong. Just own it and move on. These guys just don’t seem to ever do that.
just listening to the thing about RGB last night.
I'm not saying what's true - but tweets were removed saying she was there, - and not one photo was taken..
I hear ya on that. Just using this as an example and I get what you are saying.
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I'll happily push back if I see some obvious BS on FB.
Weirdly I find see more posts claiming to debunk memes than actual lies. Makes me think there's a market in sending out inverted propaganda:
Want to stoke nationalism? Send out posts showing how such-and-such post claimed all of your nation are evil and how you can show it's a lie. And thus your nation is under attack.
Want to promote scientific rationalism? Put up posts disproving anti-vaccination memes.
I never see the anti-vaccination memes, and I never see the 'The Jewish state is apartheid' memes - only ever the rebuttals.
For the bad memes I do see, I tend to follow the link and check the date, and the source then find more reliable sources and comment them to the post. Never works, mind.
I'm not aware of ever posting something I know to be false, or having to correct myself later, but I may be wrong. I like to think I would post a correction.
I think everyone has this problem in their FB feed. IT seems the people that think they re the biggest political activists are the ones spreading the nonsense the most too. They never stop, even after having it pointed out to them that it is false they just wait a day and then do it again with some other crap they saw.
The problem is that so many people react to memes as if it was something that had a full amount of research behind it. They could easily debunk their own garbage by simply doing a google for is (insert whatever the meme happens to be about) true? or something along those lines. But they don't.
They probably subscribe almost exclusively to echo chamber pages too.
For the life of me, I do not understand why people don’t research shit that comes from the web. Especially memes!!! Argh!!!!
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That wasn't really her, it was a body double or possibly a clone ;)
Ive heard the body double angle from a friend already. Lol
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