Changing
The gullible, the malicious, the uninformed have always been with us. Like viruses or bacteria, they lived among us. But failing an easy medium to connect with the likeminded, they typically lived in isolation. Consumers of the National Enquirer, writers of odd letters to the editor, they were the unserious among us. Rumors remained mostly background noise. Then came the internet. And just like that the new world decimated the old.
Rumors became the coin of the realm. The gullible ate with gusto and gained power and told each other tall tales. The malicious, sensing an opportunity, also grew fat. All around the world they connected dots and created pictures, phished for data, preyed on the innocent, made informational sausage out of sawdust and body parts and the remnants of ideas. Try a cleanse, eat this, eat that, grow thin, grow fat, believe this, believe that. Hucksters. Shady sellers of 21st century snake oil doing everything they could to kill trust.
The cure? A good dose of cynicism. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. In the old days of journalism, you questioned everything. You needed two reliable sources. You always asked what did the teller have to gain in telling me this? You questioned yourself to ensure you weren’t filtering facts to suit your prejudices. And even if you decided something was true you always held on to the idea that more information might later come to light. Will we survive? Sure. Mostly. The internet is the disease and the cure. Good information is available. One simply needs to be willing to look for it. And that’s the key, the willingness to prove yourself wrong.