There’s a TON of things online that is just not true, but is put out there like it is. No, I’m not talking flat-earthers and such. I’m talking from things like science, diet, nutrition, finance, money, economy, etc. There’s so much “misinformation” out there, both intentional and unintentional, and it’s coming from everywhere- MSM but also alternative sites too. Nobody can agree on the facts. And I’m not just talking politics. Talking about everything- name any subject.
I hate how when ppl write stuff online, ppl just take that author’s word as fact. Just say you’re publishing Opinion Pieces, which is what 99% of stuff out there are. But they write as if it’s fact, but it isn’t. It’s just THEIR opinion. And everyone reading the article or website thinks it’s fact and repeat it, and then cite THAT as their reference. Like WTF.
Anyway, I stand by my stance, that Octopuses (or Octopodes if we’re being technical) are smarter than humans. As soon as they figure out how to live longer than 2 years, they will become our earthly alien overloads. π
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I worked the front desk at an animal shelter a few years back. One day, a reporter from a network affiliate shows up and asks to speak with the director, loudly and proudly announcing his name and network affiliation, gleaming white teeth and perfect hairdo topping off his polished uber journalistic look. He was given an audience with the shelter director. A few days later, his story ran on the NBC affiliate. It detailed the plight of a stray dog being held in our shelter, under guidelines established by the county commisioners. BY THE COUNTY COMMISIONERS. Essentially, there were several parties who were unaware that the shelter was acting in the best interests of the dog by holding it as a stray in the hopes that the owner would come looking for it. Policy established by COUNTY COMMISIONERS allowed us to hold it for 7 days before moving on to the next step, which is usually putting it up for adoption.
These “concerned” parties, (a group of people including a local veterinarian and owner of a rescue) insisted that we release the dog to them, before the 7 day LEGAL hold expired. We refused. LEGALLY.
The reporters piece never mentioned the ordinance established by the county giving us a legal responsibility to hold the dog. The piece was written to create an image of a shelter that was refusing to cooperate with kindhearted attempts of concerned parties trying to return a poor lost doggie to its owners – even though they had no idea who the owner was. It spoke of the fact that we are not a “no-kill” shelter. (On a side note: Shelters that claim they are “no-kill” simply send animals requiring euthanasia to other facilities to do the job for them. Euthanasia is an unavoidable fact in ANY animal welfare situation.) They argued their case with the director, who held her ground, and then called the TV station to work their journalistic magic, which they did superbly, relaying inaccurate details and overlooking fact in an attempt to curry public favor.
I read somewhere that we tend to believe most of what we hear in the news, except for those stories of which we have intimate knowledge. Yeah. I’d say so.
Right. Anyone reading that article would think itβs a factual news story. But almost every single thing that is written has a slant to it, an agenda or narrative they want to push. Can’t trust a single thing we read anymore. And it goes well beyond politics or cov id.
Speaking of reporters, I was once at a local tree protest (the school wanted to cut down a few trees but the protesters had climbed onto a few of them so they couldn’t be cut)- I wasn’t protesting but saw helicopters and media, and a whole lot of people so I went to check it out to see what it was. There was a lady “reporter” that went around asking people of their opinions of this tree protest. She “interviewed” me along with a lot of other ppl. The next day, (or few days later), I saw the write-up online (I had remembered the lady’s name at the time) and holy cow, that lady wrote worse than a 4th grader. It wasn’t even about the content- she simply couldn’t write.
THESE are the people covering the “news” that we get, on tv, YT, newspapers, etc. And she was well meaning too, as she she didn’t have an agenda she was trying to push or trying to obfuscate the facts. Her writing skills were just atrocious. And she didn’t capture the why’s of the protest, or the pros and cons of them being cut or not, or how long the protest has been going on. Like she wrote nothing of value.
Again, I vote for Octopus. O_o
Our country is fugged. -_-
in this, as in all things, there is a reason. The internet needs blocks of text, they’re the oldest thing on the internet and it has always needed “more” of them. Early days, it was mostly enthusiasts, so the quality was high. This was also during the search engine wars when it was much easier to determine quality sources from bad ones. I swear I must have memorized every tool in the Geocities toolkit. Now it’s Squarespace, but the annoying thing is sometimes someone marginally competent will use it. Ineffective filter.
Returning to my well of dissappointments, once upon a time a long time ago I was writing content for websites and getting paid for it. It wasn’t that good of money, but with my typing speed I could make decent money. What I discovered quickly was that all that mattered was SEO, Search Engine Optimization. If you know what words will get the hits, you can sell your product by selectively spamming. Finding an excuse to say “vapor barrier” three times in a paragraph, as an example.
Recently (mind that’s still five years ago) I encountered Quora. In some ways it was like the internet I remembered, lots of enthusiasts with deep wells of knowledge. The problem is that there are also people who can mimic that style, and thus renders the filter ineffective.
The real problem is that it remains more rewarding to write nonsense than to create meaningful content. Market forces man, you get what you pay for. No one wants to pay for quality content (that I’ve found.) In five years using Quora and millions of views, I made a paltry $12…. so there went my motivation to create content for that space.
Now I’m just spitting my nonsense into anywhere that seems receptive. I stopped with Twitter because it’s a cesspool. It’s a better disguised cesspool than Facebook, but it suffers the same issues of promoting idiotic attention seeking and creating incentive against thoughtful content.
No one is innocent in this mess, we’re all complicit with our addiction to dopamine and scrolling, the inability to conquer these base urges.
Which is why my current outlook is ex-KGB; all is capitalist propaganda until proven otherwise. It is not safe to trust anyone, or any idea as true.
“all is capitalist propaganda until proven otherwise.”
–>Exactly. Everything we see, all the laws and rules and how systems function, and if a system is “broken,” it is done purposely so, so that the wealthy can make more money. Which is why we can’t “fix” things in the US.
“It is not safe to trust anyone, or any idea as true.”
–>well the truth IS out there on the internet. You just have to filter out the 99% that is propaganda/lies. and most ppl don’t know how to filter out what is truth and what is propaganda.
The obvious way to filter out the lies is to follow the money and ask- does someone or some corporation have an incentive to make people think a certain way, or have things done in a certain way? If yes, then there is corruption and one should use their BRAIN to think critically for once, rather than listen to puppets on the “news” or read “news articles” written by people who are knowingly and unknowingly, pushing the propagandist narrative they want to shove down our throats.
university finally rid me of the concept of absolute truth, irrefutable evidence is more often evidence that is indeed impressive, but people are lazy. The thing that drives me most nuts are the people who say “I believe this and you can’t talk me out of it”….. what they are saying is that their beliefs are too precious to them to question, that they consider themselves so fragile that an alternate perspective will shatter them.
Evidence would lean one way or another, and spending time going over raw data helps improve the intuitive sense. The thing about science though, there is no last word on anything. All of our ideas about how the world works are the best guesses we can make based on the data collected so far.
I guess what I’m saying is that the current problem is less about sinister motives, but rather the human uncomfortability with the lack of absolute facts. Scared people like a constant, old tool of any oppressor. Yes, people in power exploit it. That’s what understanding human nature is for. We, the ordinary folk most be smarter, more adaptive. We must make them wrong.
Which is why fear must die. Anything and everything must be taken as it is, there is no huge catastrophe coming, just more of the same. When people finally stop swallowing those irrational attachments and fears, we can move forward as a species.
Follow the Money. Best rule to sniff out corruption, propaganda, and true motives of corporations, governments, and individual people. Is there something to gain for pushing x narrative? If yes, then corruption.
“Early days, it was mostly enthusiasts, so the quality was high.”
–>that’s bc evil corrupt ppl and corporations did not know how to exploit it yet.
If you can control the search engines, or just Google Search, you can control the narrative. And guess what, it works.
Good luck finding shit on Google that they don’t want you to know.
I’m sure you already know:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48AOOynnmqU
What Happened to Google Search