Word Count: 916

Never has a line rung more true:
"Here's what the "post-fact" literature has right: the Internet allows us to see what other people actually think. This has turned out to be a huge disappointment"

Boy, has it. I can't tell you the number of times I've felt disappointed by the statements, posts, videos or opinions that were expressed by friends, family members, or just the human race in general, online. The internet has become a place full of opinions, and it seems like the majority of internet users aren't afraid to tell people what they think online. There's a sort of safety in posting your opinion online, a sort of anonymity, you could post your opinion and ignore everyone else's response to it if you wanted to. You can argue away without really caring about what the other person thinks, or feels, because you're both hidden behind this emotionless screen.

Still, the internet isn't a bad place, what we have to realize is that these people thought these things before the internet, and if the internet were to suddenly disappear over night they'd still think them tomorrow--and we can't really label something like the internet as good or bad, because it's going to be as good or as bad as we make it. It's not a living, breathing, conscious entity, and seeing as the internet is immeasurably vast, it doesn't even reflect the human race as a whole because the parts of it that we view are minuscule compared to how much of it there actually is.


Sometimes certain websites, such as Reddit, help the public to discover the truth--other times they muddy the issue. There is no back and white answer here, the internet is a tool and the outcome of its use depends on the user. In this day and age, you could probably find everything you need to know online about astrophysics, you could probably also find a website that teaches you about aliens living on mars and theories about how the human race is actually just a sims game inside someone's mind.

The comment sections on news and media sites are particularly interesting, because you see such a great mix of this--truth, fiction, emotion, stupidity, entertainment, all wrapped up in one place. A recent personal example of this comes from an online argument I ended up jumping into. Something I generally try to avoid, but I couldn't help myself this time, for a couple of different reasons. Here's the story in short:

The website: Facebook
The Post: An article about why people cheat, shared by George Takei,
The comment: A recently divorced friend of mine made a comment stating that "people cheat because they are selfish pieces of ****"
The argument: That people cheat because it's in their nature...yeah, I know...this would have been an easy enough argument for me to avoid if the person making this argument hadn't 1) insulted my friend, insinuating that she only makes such statements because shes' bitter blah, blah, blah and 2) they hadn't tried to use anthropology to defend their point.

You see, I'm an anthropologist, or at least, I'm studying to be an anthropologist and I'm in my final year. The example they used to support their argument was an article about the !Kung in Africa--they were trying to state that because having multiple partners is normal in some cultures that cheating is ok. My counter argument (again, in two points): 1) Anthropology is the study of human kind, our aim is not to defend certain behaviors, but to try and understand them. 2) Just because having multiple partners is ok in one culture, doesn't mean that its ok to cheat in another culture. When people have certain agreements in their relationship, and when those agreements are broken, it's wrong, and it's selfish. The En. This goes for people all around the world. Not to mention the fact that an argument stating that something that happens universally across cultures = that something being ok, doesn't even make sense.  Murder also happens universally across cultures, it's still bad.

I ended up blocking the bloke trying to make this 'cheating is ok' argument because he seemed unintelligent (sorrynotsorry?), and was extremely rude and had started to revert to name calling. So like I said, one of the great things about arguing with people online--don't want to hear their rebuttal? you're one click away from never having to see them again (hopefully)--but then something unexpected happened. People actually thanked me for writing "something intelligent in the comment section." One person said it was the first time they actually learned something from the comment section (my defense/explanation of anthropology was a bit more detailed then what I've posted here), and I thought that was really nice of them. I've had things like that happen to me before too. It's rare, but occasionally when I go to the comment section to find out more, I actually do learn something.

In the end, the internet is a great big mix of things, its a big ol' mashup of truth, lies, intelligence and stupidity. The best thing to do, is to make sure people understand that they shouldn't believe everything they read (online or otherwise) and to simply fact check before posting or reposting anything of importance.

This seems like the best way for us to avoid catching the gullibility virus...http://home.utah.edu/~msm25/Funnies/gullible.html..
...but let's be real, sometimes gullibility is just plain funny.

 

Articles Cited

Shirky, Clay. "Shirky: ‘We Are Indeed Less Willing to Agree on What Constitutes Truth’." Poynter. N.p., 17 Oct. 2012. Web. 26 Oct. 2016. 

JediHawk. "Warning, Caution, Danger, and Beware! Gullibility Virus Spreading over the Internet!" Michael's Funnies Page, n.d. Web.

All Images Courtesy of Google Search ^.^