Social media is such a cool thing. It has connected everyone with an internet connection to each other. It gives people the option to share ideas with like-minded people and get input on how to expand your mind and be a more well-rounded and intelligent person. Well, at least that’s half the story. In a place where very intelligent people can interact extensively very dumb people can also interact extensively. That is something I see put to work every day on Facebook. Let’s be real, we all know that one kid we knew in high school who just sits around sharing exclusively racist articles and tasty videos. So of course social media can be a forum for people to grow intellectually, but it is also widely a place for people to learn how to make slow cooker garlic steaks and talk about “reverse racism”. The point I’m getting at is that a lot of the lesser intelligent people (as subjective as that sounds) like to use social media for their political alignments. Now, yes there is an inherent danger in blindly following public figures, but there is something people do that can easily be avoided. It isn’t hard to fact check. Not at all. Especially with websites like Snopes that are literally dedicated to debunking internet rumors. There is absolutely no reason people should be avidly posting false information, especially this late in the election, where everything is sensitive.
For example a picture has been viral and I’ve seen it not only on Facebook, but on Twitter, and even Tumblr. The picture is of Donald Trump with his parents from what looks to be many years ago. Now this picture raised a lot of heat because…well…just look at what Trump’s parents are wearing.
This picture is insanely viral now and if Donny T’s parents really ran with the Klan it makes sense that people would share this picture nonstop…but the thing is it’s not real. One quick search on Snopes of “Trump parents kkk” will give you a fact check and tell you that it is a hoax and even includes the real picture.
This isn’t even a one sided thing, Hillary Clinton is feeling the brunt of false attacks too. This picture has gone viral in many different versions all with the same quote, which says that Hillary Clinton supposedly admitting to coercing a court decision to let a rapist go free.
This is a shocking quote and if it was real it should deter a lot of people from supporting Clinton…but spoiler alert: it’s fake. I googled the quote to see if this heinous thing was actually said and was led to politifacts’ “truth-o-meter” section which is yet another internet fact-checker, and in that section it had a whole article of viral Hillary quotes that aren’t real, one of which obviously being the aforementioned one.
This is a problem that shouldn’t be a problem. Voters should be educated on what is real and what isn’t and should not be spreading lies, especially when access to the truth is a browser tab and a 30 second google search away. Ignorant voters are the worst voters and I hope that everyone can start being smarter on social media, but I know that it can’t happen.
