Anyone else always correct false info on the internet/FB?

[SouthernLion]

My close friend (the one coming today for vacation, actually) told me that I am fighting a battle I can never win, an uphill fight against an infinite (virtually, in relation to my mortal time and resources) sea of ignorance. She says I just need to let this stuff go.

But I just can't stand how many of my friends and family (much less the whole internet) just share so much made up non-sense as if it was a fact, WITHOUT EVEN CHECKING SOURCES OR RESEARCHING. Sometimes it's plain stupid, (e.g. "Did you know that the creator of Pac-Man was a crackhead? He locked himself up in a room to quit the crack addiction, and the ghosts represent the ghosts of his addiction, and the pellets the crack-cocaine. Spookily, he died the same day Pac-Man was released...") and I have to reply "NO. WRONG. STOP SHARING THIS SHIT. THE CREATOR OF PAC-MAN IS SOME GUY IN JAPAN WHO IS ALIVE AND WELL, AND HAS PROBABLY NEVER EVEN SEEN CRACK BEFORE." Or a celebrities fake death with sad faces and RIP written and, again, they didn't bother looking up if it was true or not. That has to be some kind of emotional roller coaster when I reply "Wrong." followed by a Snopes article about them being alive.

Sometimes it is actually DANGEROUS, (e.g. "Did you know if someone is breaking in to your house and about to kill or assault you, just hold the number *5* button on your phone, and it will automatically page 911 with your GPS location and that you are in trouble!") and I have to reply "NO. WRONG. STOP SHARING THIS SHIT. YOU ARE GOING TO GET SOMEONE SERIOUSLY HURT OR KILLED THINKING THAT HELP IS ON THE WAY, WHEN ALL THEY DID WAS HOLD THE NUMBER 5."

It drives me NUTS. It's like people get such a euphoric hit of dopamine out of being the first people to "unveil" some crazy truth that no one ever knew, (probably the same reason jerks like to share spoilers to major TV shows, movies, and video games), that they don't have the self control to research objective sources a little before sharing this "amazing information" as if it was hard fact. Honestly, people make mistakes, but when it happens all the time... I start to lost respect for someone. Like I could tell them the sky is falling and they would believe me.

[Rachael]

The biggest obstacle here is you're fighting against people who believe what they want to believe. In fact, that is the biggest political plague on our society right now and the reason why the "left" and the "right" are at each other's throats - people have deep-seeded beliefs and exceptionally strong desires to live out their fantasy - and in fact, television news anchors play on these beliefs in a very dangerous way, creating a very strong confirmation bias that is difficult to fight against and creates cult-like beliefs among people.

This is made worse by the fact that CEO's and hedge fund managers right now have a vested interest in keeping us fighting against one another, rather than the real enemy - which is them, directly. And so they spew out talking points to outlets like Fox News and MSNBC pitting one side against the other, while protecting their own interests at our cost.

Unfortunately, much as the left likes to deny this, Donald Trump is right about one thing: Mainstream media is a source of fake news. (Fox News is included in this, though, much as he'd like to deny it) They skew the facts to fit a narrative and nothing they say can truly be trusted. If they say anything at all - look it up and make sure it's true. Confirm the story. If you want to know what's happening in the world, NO - and I repeat - NO cable or air stream news outlet is a reliable source. You must get your news on the internet from alternate sources, or it will be tainted.

Unfortunately, that's the reality of American news media today. That's what happened in 1996 when it suddenly became legal for huge media conglomerates to start buying up news outlets and now there are only really 6 major media groups where we get all our information from - and it's really really bad.

And so they become propaganda machines that play on people's fears and emotions - playing on their confirmation bias - creating that echo chamber - and we're left with an uninformed populace who are gullible and they will believe anything that seems remotely plausible.

[Enjay]

It's become something of a hobby of mine to watch Trump and the commentary on him over the past few months. I have been absolutely staggered by just how partisan the American news media is. To someone outside that society, these mouthpieces (on all sides) spouting political rhetoric and opinion as if it was fact are absolutely incredible, and not in a good way. I'm not saying that the UK media is perfect, that we never get biassed reporting or that what we get to see isn't filtered but I simply cannot imagine an organisation like the BBC or ITN having their news anchors sitting at their desks, looking into the camera stony-faced and delivering such slanted, and often patently nonsense, politically motivated content as I see from Fox, CNN and so on. It's mind blowing, really. Terrible, terrible news programming.

It's like people get such a euphoric hit of dopamine out of being the first people to "unveil" some crazy truth that no one ever knew, (probably the same reason jerks like to share spoilers to major TV shows, movies, and video games), that they don't have the self control to research objective sources a little before sharing this "amazing information" as if it was hard fact.

I think actually, that's basically it, for the most part. People are lazy but love a good, apparently believable (especially if they are stupid) titbit of information. They hear it, they repeat it, it spreads. It's always been that way. Rumours, conspiracy theories etc have always been part of human society. Social media just makes it much, much bigger because every idiot on the planet has access to a way of getting their repeated nonsense to a wide audience.

Should you fight it? Probably. Will you "win"? Almost certainly not. Will giving up make things worse? Maybe. Personally, I always find it refreshing when reading a bit of nonsense that someone has posted and then another person comes along and corrects them. It helps restore a little bit of my faith in humanity. Keep fighting the good fight.

[Graf Zahl]

news programming.

Using that word for American "News" channels is an insult to every honest journalist in the world.
And it's only a matter of time until the country goes down the drain because of this.

[SouthernLion]

news programming.

Using that word for American "News" channels is an insult to every honest journalist in the world.
And it's only a matter of time until the country goes down the drain because of this.

That seems a bit hyperbolic (although not impossible), but I do agree that the lost moral basis of journalist integrity here is heart breaking. Like Rachael said, it's on every side/every channel.

By the way, I didn't mean to make this political, lmao. I was talking about dumb memes shared on social media, but what Rachael brought up is definitely the much more global dangerous side of this trend.

[gramps]

US political cable news is definitely extremely biased, with a ton of spin. But I'm not convinced this is a result of ownership by a few large corporations, or anything to do with the broadcast medium.

- There are extremely biased "fringe" outlets owned by smaller companies, or independent operators. I won't name names, but if you keep up with this stuff you can probably think of a few. As bad as the major news organizations are, these guys are on a whole other level. None of these are broadcast via cable.

- There are smaller, legitimate news organizations like Buzzfeed, Vox, Politico and so on that don't operate in the cable TV space, and aren't fringe nutjobs, but are still about as biased as the cable TV crowd.

- There are fairly unbiased top reporters for each major cable outlet... for example, NBC's Lester Holt, CNN's Anderson Cooper, and Fox News' Chris Wallace all do fairly well in relevant polls. More importantly, they do about the same in these polls when broken down by political affiliation.

I'd guess this has more to do with an extremely volatile political environment than ownership or distribution medium of news outlets. The news outlets surely amplify the problem, but they don't *create* the political environment -- politicians do that.

To RexS's point: if someone is saying something that is factually incorrect, and potentially dangerous, and especially if it's being read by people you know and care about, I'd correct it. Since it's factually incorrect, it shouldn't be hard to show that it's wrong. But if it's just someone's misinformed opinion, I wouldn't bother.

[Enjay]

Seeing as how we seem to be staying on the news side of things, the other thing that gets me about US news [ahem] programmes is the style of delivery.

I guess it's really just a cultural thing but, in the UK, the news is generally delivered pretty deadpan in a fairly no-nonsense "just the facts ma'am" kind of way (for the most part at least). So, seeing these US anchors getting all animated, making personal comments and sharing opinions really is quite a culture shock. In the UK, the "wildest" our presenters usually get is allowing themselves a little smile during the "and finally" cute story about a cat being brought up by a goat or something.

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

Anyone watched the latest Robocop movie? Remember Samuel L. Jackson's TV character?

That's how 60% or even more of journos here on brazil act on TV and i am not even kidding. They go ALL the way down to be extreme on political views.

[Rachael]

My intent is not to be political with what I've said. It was more to point out that facts are actively being buried and ignored by the people we're supposed to trust the most for information. And it's disheartening.

The day when you can get your news from some jagoff comedian and it's more reliable than what you see on TV, you know you have some pretty dire issues.

And it's not just America, either. I will just say this: It's not what they say that's the issue. It's things that they don't say.

One thing Ben Shapiro said was "Facts don't care about your feelings." Unfortunately, as disgusting of a man as he is, he's right about that. It's a shame he doesn't truly believe it, himself, and just uses that statement as a weapon against the people who he disagrees with.

But it's true. Facts really don't care about your feelings. Just because you think the world is a certain way doesn't mean it actually is. It's not that much different than those moments where you're shocked to find out "Oh, GZDoom can actually do this? I never knew that! Amazing!" - it's little things like this which prove that you do not know everything. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can break away from these toxic narratives and find out for yourself what's really going on.

The fact is: The world is in REALLY deep trouble right now, but not in the way that Fox, MSNBC, CNN, or whatever other Toxic American "News" source would have you believe. We're ignoring dire warnings being sent by nature about climate change, with catastrophic consequences. Think 2017 was a bad year for hurricanes? 2018? Wait till you get a load of 2019. And the fires are going to be much worse, too. (We lost Paradise, California due to one of those) There's going to be even more lies and cheating by American politicians in order to seize and maintain power, while the American "news" media sits idly by and calls everything even. "Oh, I can't tell, Republicans say this but Democrats say that, it must be 50-50! Can't question the narrative!"

And while that's happening, even more people are going to die due to lack of medical care, more people will become homeless due to foreclosures, more people will be abused and taken for granted and advantage of in absurdly low-paying jobs, more people will lose their jobs due to automation and outsourcing, more people will be unable to pay off their student loan debt for absurd college tuition prices with abysmal loan interest rates while not being able to get a job unless they go to college to get that debt to begin with, more people will be slaughtered in mass shootings because the NRA gets whatever they want, including extremely lax gun laws that allow known and convicted violent criminals to have guns - the list goes on and on, here.

To say America has some issues it needs to address would be an understatement. And it happens because people are unwilling to wake up and investigate what's happening in their own backyard. They'd prefer to redirect the blame to Mexicans, to Muslims, to the LGBT community - anyone but themselves or the people they think they should worship as gods. The very people that the news media tells them to blame - because again, rich people don't want us angry at them, they want us angry at each other. And the clock is ticking on their ability to invade Venezuela to steal their oil, before the chickens come home to roost.

[SouthernLion]

My intent is not to be political with what I've said. It was more to point out that facts are actively being buried and ignored by the people we're supposed to trust the most for information. And it's disheartening.

The day when you can get your news from some jagoff comedian and it's more reliable than what you see on TV, you know you have some pretty dire issues.

And it's not just America, either. I will just say this: It's not what they say that's the issue. It's things that they don't say.

One thing Ben Shapiro said was "Facts don't care about your feelings." Unfortunately, as disgusting of a man as he is, he's right about that. It's a shame he doesn't truly believe it, himself, and just uses that statement as a weapon against the people who he disagrees with.

But it's true. Facts really don't care about your feelings. Just because you think the world is a certain way doesn't mean it actually is. It's not that much different than those moments where you're shocked to find out "Oh, GZDoom can actually do this? I never knew that! Amazing!" - it's little things like this which prove that you do not know everything. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can break away from these toxic narratives and find out for yourself what's really going on.

The fact is: The world is in REALLY deep trouble right now, but not in the way that Fox, MSNBC, CNN, or whatever other Toxic American "News" source would have you believe. We're ignoring dire warnings being sent by nature about climate change, with catastrophic consequences. Think 2017 was a bad year for hurricanes? 2018? Wait till you get a load of 2019. And the fires are going to be much worse, too. (We lost Paradise, California due to one of those) There's going to be even more lies and cheating by American politicians in order to seize and maintain power, while the American "news" media sits idly by and calls everything even. "Oh, I can't tell, Republicans say this but Democrats say that, it must be 50-50! Can't question the narrative!"

And while that's happening, even more people are going to die due to lack of medical care, more people will become homeless due to foreclosures, more people will be abused and taken for granted and advantage of in absurdly low-paying jobs, more people will lose their jobs due to automation and outsourcing, more people will be unable to pay off their student loan debt for absurd college tuition prices with abysmal loan interest rates while not being able to get a job unless they go to college to get that debt to begin with, more people will be slaughtered in mass shootings because the NRA gets whatever they want, including extremely lax gun laws that allow known and convicted violent criminals to have guns - the list goes on and on, here.

To say America has some issues it needs to address would be an understatement. And it happens because people are unwilling to wake up and investigate what's happening in their own backyard. They'd prefer to redirect the blame to Mexicans, to Muslims, to the LGBT community - anyone but themselves or the people they think they should worship as gods. The very people that the news media tells them to blame - because again, rich people don't want us angry at them, they want us angry at each other. And the clock is ticking on their ability to invade Venezuela to steal their oil, before the chickens come home to roost.

There are some things here I disagree with you strongly on (I can PM if you care enough), but I won't post them here so as to not turn in to a political argument, (plus I have a ton of respect for you.) But I do agree with the big picture points you are making.

[Matt]

I'm just gonna post here to express my appreciation for that absolutely hilarious Pac-Man example.

[kb1]

It can be a losing battle. Best advise is to make a single correction, for the people who are interested and care to know the truth, and then be done with it. Many people post BS just to get people worked up. Very sad. Posting a single correction keeps their BS from "sticking", and, at the very least, shows that there's a different view, and a different way to look at things. Anyone who's 1) seeking the truth, and 2) respects your opinion, will be served by a single correction. Everyone else truly believes some else and won't be swayed, or they're trolling. No need to counter-post again, if your time is valuable.

@Rachael: I very much agree with the general statements, but must disagree on these points:
* Ben Shapiro: Disgusting? From what I've seen, he basically presents facts, and uses logical deduction to base his view upon. I can't find fault with that. As for his personal views, he seems to support strong community and family, and logical thinking. I don't agree with all his views, but certainly don't find him disgusting because he has different personal views.

* The world is in trouble. But I can't do too much to help it. I try to be conservative of resources, and get the most use out of them without waste. What else do you expect me to do about it?

* Lax gun laws? People kill. Guns have no brain. Should we ban gasoline? Ropes? Knives? Bleach? Baseball bats?RA fights to allow me to continue to protect myself, of which I'm quite thankful.
[quote="Rachael"]My intent is not to be political with what I've said. It was more to point out that facts are actively being buried and ignored by the people we're supposed to trust the most for information. And it's disheartening.

* (Americans) are unwilling to wake up and investigate what's happening in their own backyard? - That has not been my experience.

* America redirecting blame to (groups of people), anyone but themselves? - I see plenty of self-criticism in America. And, the groups of people are not to blame, but sometimes, the actions of individual people *are* to blame. I have a big problem having to financially support people that come here to break the laws, and refuse to pay their share of taxes. I support charities that I believe in. I work for a living, and I pay my taxes, and follow the law. Why do I have to get ripped off?

* Stealing Venezuela's oil? Guess which country sends millions of dollars, food, medical aid, disaster relief, military support around the world every year?

America is not perfect, and has her share of corrupt politicians, as does every country since the beginning of time. But America has done a whole hell of a lot for human, individual rights, and continues to do so. America's people send money for food, shelter, and medical aid to organizations dedicated to helping people in need all around the world. America is consistently at the front of the line to assist when natural disasters occur on the globe.

Yes, American news is shitty. But, in many countries, the government supplies all the news. America's people are trying to improve the human condition, which is a lot more than I can say for the vast majority of countries.

To me, what's most toxic are the generalizations that get applied to groups of people. This is where some trait is used to categorize a bunch of people, and make broad statements about the whole group. The traits used can be anything:
Race, sex, political affiliation, nationality, weight, height, appearance, you name it. Oscillating between an individual's actions, and a category of people is a worn-out technique used to "win" arguments, but it's almost never really based in fact.

Ok, there's my single counter statement. I had more to say, but I grow weary of the topic.

[Rachael]

Let's avoid turning this into a real debate. There's a place for that, and this isn't it.

Before anyone else responds please bear in mind that a lot of people have very strong feelings about the issues being discussed here, and that's quite understandable. I do, too.

I think it's very troubling that these issues keep permeating our games and stuff. It's proof that they're very important to us and it's very difficult to ignore. However - we're all modders and players of our beloved 1993 Doom, first and foremost - right wing and left wing bullshit comes a VERY distant second to that. So let's keep that in mind, here.

If you have something to say, keep it short and to the point (and respectful) and be done with it. Don't debate it here, take that somewhere else.

Keep in mind that there are a ton of people who use this very forum who are diametrically opposed to me and my ideology - yet I do not remove them from this place. Why? Is it because I want more people here? No. It's because this isn't the place for ideological rules. I am okay with people disagreeing with me - and on a fundamental level it always helps me to know where they stand, anyway. No one is going to be 100% in line with my thinking. No one is going to be 100% in line with your way of thinking, either. That's just how the world is - and it'd be an awfully boring place if we did all agree.

Plus, I do genuinely believe that having people around who don't like me and tell me that I am wrong actually makes me much stronger. I don't have to be their friend - I am not here for that and that's not why I allow them to continue being here. But I think it's healthy to have a bit of diversity - at the very least of opinion, if not everything else.

The big rule that we do have here is "be decent" (which, shockingly, the right wing has managed to make even just basic decency into a political issue, but I digress). If you can't at least do that, then you have no place here, and I will make sure you understand at least that.

[Jeimuzu73]

Did you know that the creator of Pac-Man was a crackhead?

I knew those power pills were quite fishy. And who can forget Shigeru Miyamoto’s penchant for magic mushrooms? /sarcasm

[Scripten]

The big rule that we do have here is "be decent" (which, shockingly, the right wing has managed to make even just basic decency into a political issue, but I digress). If you can't at least do that, then you have no place here, and I will make sure you understand at least that.

I think this is kind of the crux of the issue, though. At some point, "polite" equals "decent", but that's not always the case. Being nice isn't always being kind. Ideas aren't supposed to be able to hurt people, or so we've been told. But they do. Rhetoric can cause some really dire shit to go down. So it can get really difficult to have conversations where everyone can get along, at least when those subjects turn up, because sure, someone can talk politely about the various pros and cons of some economic theory, but we have base disagreements on the fundamental humanity of choice groups or the validity of science.

I have friends across a reasonable portion of the political spectrum, but there's a large subsets outside that range where communication breaks down even over basic shit, because the very definition of what constitutes "decency" is variable.