I am one of those people that loves to pass the time reading about the most random assortment of topics imaginable. There really isn’t a pattern, and the topics I scan range anywhere from breaking news, to a BuzzFeed quiz about what your astrological sign says about what you will have for dinner 20 years from now. I love to absorb every aspect of information available to me, and of course leave no room left in my brain for knowledge that can be of use.
My friends always make fun of me for being the kind of person that is constantly spouting random facts about life – I have a fact for every situation, mostly false and probably simply stated for entertainment value. The internet is weird because almost anything can be made to appear credible, and anyone’s first hand account of something, or personal knowledge that one decides to share, could be no more than a unique occurrence or a fluke – yet we take for fact what others on the internet have to say. It’s an interesting phenomenon to say the least, to know that the things we put out to the world through the World Wide Web seem to be cemented in some sort of reality. Even if that reality is that statement of how unrealistic that reality may be.
The Internet is a fun place, but everything written within the confines of the digital world needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Aside from lack of fact checking, everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt based simply on the enormous amount of personal bias. The Internet is like everyone’s own personal diary, we write for ourselves, to document, and to sometimes inform others. There are no restrictions as to what kinds of information we share with the world, or how we are to do it. It’s beautiful, but with websites like Wikipedia, you can see this relatively new platform of information can easily get away from us.
No longer is the time of textbooks and hard literature to back your perspective, it simply takes a five second Google search and typically more than half a million results to choose from. People can utilize the Internet to find anything, just about anywhere to support their perspective, and if you are like me – this is exactly how you use it.
My advice to all reading is to fact check, so the next time your friend wants to know the best method of doing something, on a topic you skimmed on yahoo news three months ago, it’s important that you refer back and do all you can to ensure the integrity of the information. With the best of efforts, we can get the general population back on track with their informational access – it’s a long but rewarding road and I for one will be more than happy to learn all I can about research based, scientifically supported facts on what ten tricks you can do with a can opener that you haven’t heard of – and beyond. The sky is the limit!
