Since Fake News has been in the news so much lately, it’s time to take on the beast. If you’ve been burrowed in a hole the past month or so, then you may not have heard about the multiple fake and false stories that played out during the presidential election show. Many of them surfaced on social media, with Facebook serving as a primary vehicle.
Facebook, for some reason, seems to be where some people get news. As a corruptive, manipulative, short-sighted news source, Facebook is probably just fine. If you want to live that way and distort your reality, go for it.
I figured out how bad Facebook was as the storm about Fake News gusted about us. If you use Facebook, you’ll see “news” stories off to the side. They often pertain to celebrities and frequently make outrageous claims that a sane person knows is either impossible or wrong. I typically ignore the posts.
As the news wars intensified, I started to glance at some of those news snippets. Three times I clicked on stories where the headlines seemed so weird and out of place to me that I couldn’t imagine the story was real. I don’t remember two of those stories because they were so wildly stupid, pointless and flat wrong.
The one that stood out to me was the one that said Clint Eastwood died. I’ve loved Eastwood as an actor and movie director, and the thought of him passing hit me. So I clicked on the link. I read the falsehood. Then I went to Google and checked the news and saw that Clint was still alive and kicking and that it was just one more example of Fake News getting attention.
People grab those stories because they WANT to believe them. The stories reinforce their prevailing view of the world or stimulate their senses. There’s a fascinating quote I read in the past few weeks (can’t take credit for it) that most people read or watch news to reinforce their beliefs rather than challenge themselves by looking and listening to a different perspective.
I think that syndrome is both what drives Fake News and at the root of much of our current cultural (political) divisiveness where people jump on a seemingly oddball bandwagon. We see the world a certain way and want to believe that’s the way it is, rather than acknowledging the world doesn’t always fit our view and it’s EACH OF US who has to adapt.
Most of us create personal fantasy worlds. We live in them throughout portions of every day. We escape through movies, books, music, sports, television, art, religion. That can help us cope with complicated daily issues and relax, but it doesn’t make the bigger stuff go away. It’s terrifying when sources start to create Fake News stories to add to our fantasy worlds, and the PEOPLE START TO BELIEVE those stories.
We’ve lost something when that happens. We lose the ability to discern what’s really happening vs. what we WANT to happen or WISH would happen or DREAM would happen.
Wishing won’t make it so. Nor will sharing a Fake News story and giving it wider distribution make it accurate or correct. It’s still wrong, false, distortive and manipulative. The sharing of these types of stories during the election news cycle was another sad statement about our willingness to examine the issues we face with a clear eye and open mind. Many people chose to send and share to fake out and influence their friends and followers.
None of us individually can stop the flow of Fake News. What we can do is maintain a discerning eye, listen, analyze, use our brains, think things through, hear out other perspectives. We’ll be better off if we’d consistently live that way.
Facebook, for some reason, seems to be where some people get news. As a corruptive, manipulative, short-sighted news source, Facebook is probably just fine. If you want to live that way and distort your reality, go for it.
I figured out how bad Facebook was as the storm about Fake News gusted about us. If you use Facebook, you’ll see “news” stories off to the side. They often pertain to celebrities and frequently make outrageous claims that a sane person knows is either impossible or wrong. I typically ignore the posts.
As the news wars intensified, I started to glance at some of those news snippets. Three times I clicked on stories where the headlines seemed so weird and out of place to me that I couldn’t imagine the story was real. I don’t remember two of those stories because they were so wildly stupid, pointless and flat wrong.
The one that stood out to me was the one that said Clint Eastwood died. I’ve loved Eastwood as an actor and movie director, and the thought of him passing hit me. So I clicked on the link. I read the falsehood. Then I went to Google and checked the news and saw that Clint was still alive and kicking and that it was just one more example of Fake News getting attention.
People grab those stories because they WANT to believe them. The stories reinforce their prevailing view of the world or stimulate their senses. There’s a fascinating quote I read in the past few weeks (can’t take credit for it) that most people read or watch news to reinforce their beliefs rather than challenge themselves by looking and listening to a different perspective.
I think that syndrome is both what drives Fake News and at the root of much of our current cultural (political) divisiveness where people jump on a seemingly oddball bandwagon. We see the world a certain way and want to believe that’s the way it is, rather than acknowledging the world doesn’t always fit our view and it’s EACH OF US who has to adapt.
Most of us create personal fantasy worlds. We live in them throughout portions of every day. We escape through movies, books, music, sports, television, art, religion. That can help us cope with complicated daily issues and relax, but it doesn’t make the bigger stuff go away. It’s terrifying when sources start to create Fake News stories to add to our fantasy worlds, and the PEOPLE START TO BELIEVE those stories.
We’ve lost something when that happens. We lose the ability to discern what’s really happening vs. what we WANT to happen or WISH would happen or DREAM would happen.
Wishing won’t make it so. Nor will sharing a Fake News story and giving it wider distribution make it accurate or correct. It’s still wrong, false, distortive and manipulative. The sharing of these types of stories during the election news cycle was another sad statement about our willingness to examine the issues we face with a clear eye and open mind. Many people chose to send and share to fake out and influence their friends and followers.
None of us individually can stop the flow of Fake News. What we can do is maintain a discerning eye, listen, analyze, use our brains, think things through, hear out other perspectives. We’ll be better off if we’d consistently live that way.