Maybe This Internet Thing Isn't So Great

Despite my various new-media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, I'm beginning to believe all this access is having a negative effect on people and perhaps society as a whole. The Internet has many fine qualities to be sure. It allows people to communicate over great distances instantly. It allows for the dissemination of endless amounts of information. And perhaps most important, the pornography selection is fantastic.

But I feel like with the overflow of information and the 24/7/365 platform granted to anyone with an Internet connection, people are consuming quantity over quality and at times, using their platform to make the world dumber.

To be fair, I must be open to the possibility that this blog is simply me using a platform to make the world dumber, but there are others who go much further than I. I make silly porn jokes, harmless right? Some people use their platform to advance a not so well thought out agenda. It's to be expected, but why is it not more discouraged? I see it all the time on large scales and small, and it's the small scales that concern me. I'm not simply pointing at lunatics like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church; anyone with half a brain can see they all drank way to much paint as children. Mainly, I'm looking at the seemingly mellow statuses posted by everyday citizens via Facebook and Twitter.

This is how people use to do it. Of course, if his ideas were stupid, they could throw vegetables at him until he shut up.

Every time I scroll through my Facebook newsfeed, I see another post from one "friend" of mine championing the politics and ideology of liberalism. I do not care that she is a liberal. Liberals and conservatives all look the same to me ... crazy. What bothers me is the arrogant and ignorant nature of what she decides to show the world. The other day she posted a status on Democratic protests and how the "right" people were finally pissed off. The "right" people? Who are these people? If she's so damn smart, how does she know they're "right"? My greatest fear, someone will read ridiculous posts like that one, and the 200 others a day she posts either bashing Republicans like George W. Bush (it's over let it go) or blowing Democrats like Harry Reid (he's attractive for an older man), and become indoctrinated with ignorance.

Why might this occur? Because people really no longer care if something they read or see is true, only that they know it. If I posted a video online saying Michael Jackson had returned from the grave to fist fight Tom Brady, someone would present it as fact (eventually that someone would be a major new organization like FOX or MSNBC, sadly). With the massive amounts of information, the verification of which cannot come fast enough to please people, truth, or some near approximation of it, is no longer a concern. It doesn't matter if it's true; it matters if you're the first to know. That's why news outlets routinely post online without facts, completely willing to just change it later as the facts come in. Martians landed in Dallas, Texas ... No, wait, a plane carrying Martin Short landed in Dallas, Texas ... No, sorry, Martin Short was not aboard, and the plane landed in New Delhi. They fail to recognize that they are perpetuating a system that disseminates bad information and encourages ignorance. But hey, they generate revenue, which is all that matters right?


I have no solution for this problem; in fact, there isn't one. People will always be stupid while believing they have wisdom to share with the world. And they may, but in today's fast paced, get it done now so I can go home and hear myself get fatter world, they won't be willing to think through their wise ideas ... making them very unwise. The nerve of those types of people.