May
24
The Beauty of Logic on Facebook
Just experienced a perfect example of hive mind rumor mongering on facebook, and how the Internet has the tools to deal with it perfectly. It also revealed that sometimes ignorance is simply laziness and not a matter of unfortunate circumstances.
1. Got one of those child kidnapping emergency messages on facebook. Those of course strike fear deep in the heart of anyone, making them even more cruel when they are not true.
2. Since our family likes to use our social media in a proactive, responsible manner, we ALWAYS check out these kidnapping messages before even considering passing them on. It’s simple enough to take the basic details like names, places and license plate numbers and put them into a web search. Click on the “news” link on a google search to see if the information shows up in any current stories. You can also click on the “realtime” link to see if any current details are emerging.
3. The license plate number in the latest rumor hit right away as a match for an existing confirmed false rumor on snopes.com. Notice that the timing alone confirms it as false, unless snopes is in the habit of taking current breaking news and posting it to represent old content. I kind of doubt that they do however.
4. So rumor confirmed as false, instead of reposting it, we put up a summary of the debunking details and ask our friends to stop posting it or not post it in the first place.
5. Now the fun part. One frankly distant connection chimes in with this contribution: “I haven’t checked it out yet, but snopes isn’t always right.”
Okay, two big problems there. First of all, this person chimed in to proudly proclaim that they hadn’t done any work or research on the matter at hand, but they had an opinion. Why?
a. If you’re not ADDING to a discussion, there is no reason to post anything. Even if you’re chiming in to tell us Aunt Tilly’s cherry pie recipe, at least you’re contributing something.
b. Then the contribution to simply cast doubt on an information source. Regardless of the fact that snopes positively confirms anything they state as TRUE with support from EXPERT sources, the correlating facts from an old story to the “new” one confirms the new one as false without needing a blessing from snopes.
The blatant denial of pure logic, connected with the ability to instantly publish any bit of information really, really scares us. But it also starts a fire in our belly and a mission in our minds to CONFIRM any and all rumors on social media before we even consider passing them on. And if you cannot confirm a “breaking emergency” it’s probably better not to pass it on at all. The 911 system still works perfectly for emergencies, and emergency services have better things to do than respond to internet urban legends.