So, last week I’m at this bar and this guy tries to convince me of why there shouldn’t be any gun control. And I’m doing my best to hear him out. Then, he takes out his phone and shows me a meme to prove his point.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/hondswitz.asp
To which I replied “yeah, but you have to consider that Switzerland has mandatory military service for each male citizen, so everyone there is taught weapon discipline and safety. Also, their unemployment rate is pretty low (3.16 %), their economy is especially strong, and they have a very well ranked education system. Honduras is the 2nd poorest country in world with an extremely unstable government. Switzerland has the lower homicide rate because it’s a fully developed nation not because everyone has guns”. His response was to roll his eyes and say “well if you’re gonna look at it like that”. This was one of the many cases of someone thinking that memes are the be-all-end-all’s of arguments.
It’s like when someone shows you one of those stupid ass conspiracy memes saying, “What if I told you that the world is run by corporations”.
First off: you’re not really saying anything that hasn’t been said in a while. I mean, do you actually believe that’s a radically new thought?
Second: the reason corporations lobby to congress is because they know that politicians, like Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders, can always say no.
If corporations really ran the world and didn’t have to answer to governments than why do you think they outsource to other countries where they don’t have to worry about labor laws? If these overlord business men making decisions out of the Death Star don’t have to answer to the government than why don’t they just dispel with all U.S. labor laws and start making more profit? Probably because this isn’t a movie and as incredibly corrupt as these corporations are they still have their limits. Defending corporate America makes my skin crawl but you still have to admit that no one takes you seriously when you say stupid shit like, "The government is completely run by big business". Wouldn't it be more mature to say that corporations strongly influence the gov (albeit to a disgusting degree)? And surely, I can't be alone in irritation at hearing people say, “This is what the Government doesn’t want you to know”. The government doesn’t care if you know because they know that you don’t have the time or energy to do anything about it. Consider the fact the Anonymous exposed the DNC’s massive corruption scandal and the world was made aware of how the DNC conspired to rig the primary election in Hillary’s favor. What happened? Not a damn thing. The DNC didn’t even really bother denying it. They just continued on with their agenda.
But worse than the conspiracy nut memes are the anti-media memes. People are constantly complaining about how the news only speaks in half truths. And yet, all these people do is share memes that only tell you a fraction of the story. It’s like when everyone shares articles from nonsense websites like IFL science saying Scientist just confirmed Aliens built the pyramids (when what really happened is some “scientists” mentioned their beliefs that aliens might exist).
When you sensationalize news by sharing memes, how are you different than Fox News? If you truly want to inform the public and make people aware of the truth, then you actually have to be objective about it and read entire pages, not just headlines. You see, the truth, much like reality, is largely boring and mundane. You can’t take crisis-like issues like government corruption and stuff it into a meme. You wanna talk about a good news source? Listen to NPR. It’s boring, non sensational, and best of all you don’t have people showing any kind of emotional bias. They give headlines that should spark your interest so that you can actually look more into these issues.
You’d think that would be enough. But no. Both the very liberal and very conservative people are saying, “you can’t believe anything mainstream media tells you.”. However, they have no problem sharing mainstream articles when the article says what they want to hear.
I’ve met a lot of people tell me that they never read newspapers or watch any of the mainstream medias because all they do is lie. Then they tell me that they only get their news from independent online sources, which is ridiculous because those independent sources are comprised of bloggers getting their news from mainstream media.
It’s also extremely infantile to say that you can never trust the media. If every major media is reporting that there’s a major nuclear arms debate going between two world leaders, you can be pretty sure it’s happening. When you should be more skeptical is when media is giving their particular opinion on the intentions of someone.
Now, I’m only saying that the use of things like blogs and memes are fine if you’re just trying to share a laugh. But what really pisses me of is when people whip out these blogs as argument winners. You don’t win an argument by sharing opinion. You win arguments with cold hard facts. Even this article, which is nothing more than me ranting my opinion, should never be used in an argument. If you agree with me fine, but don’t think that anything I’ve said in this bullshit rant has any kind of significance in the world. I just really want to see this fad go away because it prevents intellectual debates. Each camp believes memes make their argument irrefutable. Someone post a meme stating some point and everyone in the comments starts saying, “well, you can’t argue that”. Of course you can. People not only will argue that but they’ll probably do it with another meme. For every meme on your side of the argument the other side has one too. Just look at these:
https://memegenerator.net/instance/69339101 https://imgflip.com/meme/Maury-Lie-Detector?page=3
https://memegenerator.net/instance/67840743 http://www.quickmeme.com/Scumbag-Baby-Boomers/
https://www.pinterest.com/Erika12Lopez/-2-chainz/ http://thedailyquotes.com/stop-waiting-for-things-...
Lastly, when you tell me that some politician is Adolph Hitler reborn, you should know that everybody thinks that the other side's guy is Adolph Hitler reborn.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/u... http://imgur.com/gallery/Lvzom
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/societyquo... https://www.pinterest.com/pin/227572587394229318/
http://www.plausibletruths.com/blogging-truth/dont... https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2014/06/0...
