people who perpetuate ignorance

[BlaqueKatt]

in this day and age with most of us having access to the internet, it simply astounds me how much crap I hear coming from the mouths of the educated and uneducated alike.

I still hear "the daddy long spider has the most lethal venom of any creature on the planet" and "it takes gum 7 years to digest in your body" as well as "john wayne had 5 pounds of undigested meat in his colon"(none of these are true, a simple 5 second search at snopes will verify that)

as far as "the law says x,y, and z.", when it normally says exactly the opposite, and takes less than five seconds to verify, well that's just irresponsible, as well as ignorant.

We have a wealth of information at out fingertips, and what do we do with it?
Ignore it and continue to remain ignorant. Sadly this is one of many reasons why I dislike humanity.

Sadly I see more of this online than IRL-which just makes it 100x worse.

[blas87]

Haha, the John Wayne one I heard on the second Boondocks Saints movie.

[Andara Bledin]

It's funny; I was going to post a thread along this very line today.

Most of us here have the entire Internet at our fingertips. But rather than, say, confirm that the information being passed along is anything more than specious rumor, there are people who will make declarative statements and believe them whole-heartedly regardless of the fact that they were constructed out of whole cloth.

Whether it's about laws, about what someone supposedly said, the definitions of common words, current headlines... All fodder for the perpetuation of misinformation, and all easily confirmed or refuted with only a few minutes effort.

^-.-^

[blas87]

Well, you also have to bear in mind that anyone can post anything online and call it true. Then you have to consider the source and if it's biased or not. Just about every journalist is biased in one way or another. All kinds of websites are self-edit, like wiki.

[DrFaroohk]

OMG did you know KFC doesn't use real chicken!?!?!?

I love snopes. I can tell pretty quick who's an idiot in my life just by what kind of shit they spread around like that.

[Andara Bledin]

Well, you also have to bear in mind that anyone can post anything online and call it true. Then you have to consider the source and if it's biased or not. Just about every journalist is biased in one way or another. All kinds of websites are self-edit, like wiki.

Absolutely.

But things like, say, the text of laws are things that aren't really subject to bias. There's no excuse to get things like that wrong.

^-.-^

[BlaqueKatt]

Well, you also have to bear in mind that anyone can post anything online and call it true. Then you have to consider the source and if it's biased or not. Just about every journalist is biased in one way or another. All kinds of websites are self-edit, like wiki.

true, however it's not that difficult to check multiple sources, especially with sites like wiki that cite the sources and usually have a link to the sources.

oh man, my point was just proven with #10 on this list from the houston chronicle *headdesk*

[LadyBarbossa]

Someone posted one of those 'freak the hell out RIGHT NOW, there's a new virus out to eat our computers!' statuses last week, and right at the beginning it said "CONFIRMED ON SNOPES", when, in fact, if one goes to Snopes, one will find that it's false.

[Gravekeeper]

To quote XKCD, this should be required reading in school.

[Greenday]

Someone posted one of those 'freak the hell out RIGHT NOW, there's a new virus out to eat our computers!' statuses last week, and right at the beginning it said "CONFIRMED ON SNOPES", when, in fact, if one goes to Snopes, one will find that it's false.

Someone a couple weeks back did this. I posted the snopes link proving how full of crap it was and said so. My comment was deleted within minutes. What a tool.

[Andara Bledin]

I've managed to correct scarelore updates in a manner that calls the poster out as an idiot, and I still get thanked for the correction. Probably just been lucky about who I've corrected.

^-.-^