When I was first exposed to the Internet, I had already had exposure to BBSes, mailing lists, and more. Those ARCHIE, VERONICA and GOPHER searches offered me amazing tools to dig into academic and other resources for information and just knocked my socks off.
So, I’ve always viewed the Internet primarily as a research tool. When doing research on any academic topic, the general procedure, back in those long ago days of yore when colleges and universities were repositories of knowledge and literacy, and training grounds for critical thinking, involved a LOT of sifting and winnowing, comparison of purported facts, sources and documentation, and the eventual selection of most reliable sources and facts.
I guess I just unconsciously and tenaciously hung onto the misconception that most–or at least many–folks treated presentations of information on the Internet that way for some time, but slowly I began to realize that–by far–most folks just turn to “information” received from Internet organs for confirmation of their biases, not for real information.
And then I woke up, looked around me and realized that the relationship between most folks and (most) information has been that way all along, and getting even more so as time has passed.
Sad. Real stories are much more powerful than fiction, but ready acceptance of lies by lazy, bigoted, ignorant folks seems to be more powerful still.
Discouraging.
Along with the Internet being used as a disinformation organ by so many, in similar manner to the way the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind uses TV, radio, movies, newspapers and magazines to spread propaganda and plain bald-faced lies, the schools have been churning out both illiterates and a-literates at an alarming rate, “products” who lack even the basic tools to see that they are willing, even complicit, victims of the Dunning-Kruger Effect who think they are competent to discern truth from lies, fact from fiction, etc. . . but are not.
Tired of all the stupidity passing itself off as punditry (and being lapped up by the sheeple). Tired of social media devolving, as such things do, into nothing but stupid repetitions of the latest fantasies or silly “memes” that are little but propaganda for the a-literate.
Just tired, period, I guess.
Maybe I’ll take a nap.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to trust Internet sources to be untrustworthy until they demonstrate their material is reliable.