Don't believe everything you read.

[rogueslayer452]

Taken from the Crunchy Questions Meme:

What are some truths you think everyone knows, but chooses to ignore?

That you shouldn't believe everything that you read on the Internet, and that you should always double and triple check the sources before sharing something you found online, and when in doubt just don't share it at all until there's actual confirmation.

And while I don't know if people consciously choose to ignore it, I do think that, thanks to the fast-paced nature of social media, it has made people want quick information rather than doing the research for themselves so they'll believe anything that immediately pops up on their feed and share it with others. Sometimes without even reading the links provided, because if the people they follow are linking it well, then it must be reliable and true, right? This is how misinformation gets spread, unfortunately, whether purposefully or not. We've all accidentally made this mistake, I've made it several times myself over the years, it happens. But I think we should try to make it a habit of not believing everything we see online without credible sources, or treat everything we see as mere rumors until proven otherwise.

Comments

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

When in reality,
  headlines are often misleading or don't tell the whole story. I've seen
  people take something out of context and try to twist it for whatever
  narrative they want to spin when, no, if you actually read the
  article or interview or whatever you can see they're saying the exact
  opposite of what you're claiming they said.

*Nods* I've seen this so many times.  It can also lead to heated internet debates clearly borne out of one or both parties not having any damn idea what they're talking about.

So many people do this, especially on social media, because I think they  expect other people to read it and make conclusions and not do it
  themselves for some reason (which in a way I get, especially if an
  article is very long and you want a summarized version, but at the same
  time it takes less than a few minutes to skim an article to see if
  there's any merit to what people are claiming). 

I did this once, and man, did I learn my lesson. I actually almost commented with that. I was in college and an Eljay N00b, and some article talked about how a blog writer had quit because of trolls. I assumed they meant more innocent trolls and made fun of her - without reading the whole article. (This was also when making fun of "wanky" fans was a thing, so I imagine I wanted to get some kind of token for finding someone to call butthurt. IDK.) The comments were like, "um, I can't blame her, the trolls threatened her life."  I had NO idea. I ate crow very quickly. 


But in this fast-paced information world, people want to to  the first to comment or report about something without checking
  the sources and if anything is legit.
Exactly! They also want information to be delivered quickly, so even if they're not "first", they still don't have patience for verbiage. 

(Funnily enough, there was a website I used to check constantly but have  since stopped because of the clickbaity titles of their articles,
  intentionally done to be more "woke" but oftentimes it's just cringey at
  best and at worst the articles were poorly researched and were just
  written to get a certain reaction from people, and once I realized that I
  was like, alright, I'm out.)

I'm thinking:

A. Buzzfeed.

B. Upworthy.

C. Cracked.

I've heard that as far as Upworthy goes, the siteowners actually felt pressured to get clickbaity because of Facebook's algorithms. I sort of get that, but won't you lose clicks if people begin to realize they're pointless? And everyone seems to have as thinking about it, I can't remember the last time I saw someone link to an article or video from Upworthy.