Internet Misinformation Drives Me Up a Wall

[OreoRosies86]

It seems no matter where I turn online someone is posting fake Einstein quotes, ridiculous Obama hoaxes touting them as fact, or spreading complete misinformation ("Did you know that eating avacados will reduce your cancer risk by 99%?")

I usually just roll my eyes, but lately I have been getting the urge to provide info that debunks their posts or ask for reliable, peer reviewed research to back it up. I think what finally did me in is seeing my 87th fake Einstein quote this month. Einstein was awesome, but I seriously doubt he ever had a strong opinion about cell phones

I guess I'm just venting. I don't post a ton online, but gah.... such a pet peeve. Even "respectable" news outlets are doing this now.

 

[Narwhal]

You sound like the perfect friend for my husband. He has been on a bunch of debunking rants on forums, fb etc.

He likes to wave his hands in the air as he rants. Hilarious.

But I do agree it is annoying! Good luck picking your battles and not pulling your hair out.

 

[monarch64]

It used to drive me nuts. It's good to vent, but it's maybe not so good to get really worked up about misinformation to the point that you become THAT PERSON who calls everyone out and posts snopes.com links in everyone's comments sections. Misinformation has been around forever. The internet is just a relatively new medium on which people pass it around.

Elliot1986, if you were born in 86 you might not remember these, but chain letters sent through snail mail used to be popular. If you broke the chain you were basically sentenced to a horrible life of bad luck or someone you loved would die. That crap used to make me insane and I remember being so flabbergasted upon seeing who was participating because they were typically not total idiots!

 

[arkieb1]

I think the most annoying part for me is that school children (I used to be an English History teacher) absorb a lot of what they read and don't have the ability to be able to discern what is sheer rubbish and what is true. We used to have to teach them never trust what you read on the internet which is difficult when over half of them insist on using it as a main source for information.

 

[VRBeauty]

It used to drive me nuts. It's good to vent, but it's maybe not so good to get really worked up about misinformation to the point that you become THAT PERSON who calls everyone out and posts snopes.com links in everyone's comments sections. Misinformation has been around forever. The internet is just a relatively new medium on which people pass it around.

Elliot1986, if you were born in 86 you might not remember these, but chain letters sent through snail mail used to be popular. If you broke the chain you were basically sentenced to a horrible life of bad luck or someone you loved would die. That crap used to make me insane and I remember being so flabbergasted upon seeing who was participating because they were typically not total idiots!

I actually do that with some of the stuff some of my fb friends post.. especially the ones who post a lot of OMG! type "news" stories... not every time, but from time to time and I have seen some of them change their posting habits, so I guess that's a victory. There's enough bad stuff going on that I figure there's no reason to compound it with faux bad stuff, and no excuse for not checking out the stuff that stretches credulity to begin with.

 

[SB621]

What a minute...so not EVERYTHING on the internet is true?????!!!!!!

Sorry I had too, anyone else remember that commercial?

I'm with you, it also drives me nuts. I'm usually pretty good about discussing politics but during election time it drives me bat $hit crazy all the misinformation that gets posted. I always fact check before I post something.

 

[OreoRosies86]

The health stuff makes me insane. One of my normally very level headed and normal-to-be-around friends has in the past couple of years gone completely off the deep end with ridiculous fake health information. If it were just her that was affected that would be one thing, but truthfully I worry for her kids. She sees a homemade "Did you know that sunscreen causes skin cancer? Use potato juice instead" and "VACCINATIONS KILL" the next day is vowing to never use sunscreen or vaccinate again. Its insufferable and so completely irresponsible.

So as much as I don't want to be that person, it would be nice to say "Uh, this is untrue and here is the actual proof instead of some meme a random vegan made when they were bored."

 

[momhappy]

Yes, it bothers me too and it should probably come as no surprise that I am that person who posts the link debunking the misinformation. Since I started doing that, I have noticed that my friends/family don't post as much crap any more - maybe they are checking the info for themselves before posting or maybe they are just afraid to post I don't think that there's anything wrong with letting others know that the info is false - it's irresponsible to post it and equally as irresponsible to let it go IMO.

 

[JewelFreak]

One of my pet peeves, too! Ha! I had to tell a friend to stop sending me death warnings about every possible item one might use, swallow, breathe, or eat. She is convinced there is a cure for cancer & the pharm co's have kept it secret all these years -- an example of her gullibility.

Headlines like "Your phone no. can predict whether you will die young!" drive me batso!

--- Laurie

 

[Sparklelu]

Yes, annoying at the very least, and I too post snopes.com links to debunk the most egregious.
Sadly most of the youth get their information from internet sources so they often do not form intelligent opinions, just parrot back what they read on the internet. My favorite recently was the "photo" of the Malaysian jet lying fully intact in the water like just waiting to be found and so many people were like Yeah, great they found it.

I do have two other pet peeves.

The people who cannot spell. It's SINCE not sense, there is a difference between their, they're and there, and except and accept and allot is not the word for a large quantity!!
Also,another one that gets me is when someone posts a question or other statement and a zillion people post the same answer over and over again! Add more info fine, but a slew of yeses makes me nuts.

 

[monarch64]

I actually don't check FB that often anymore and I just unfollowed people who were constantly posting inane things. Who has time to let people know they're stupid all day long? Not me. And as far as it being irresponsible to just let things go, momhappy, it is not my personal responsibility to let the mental midgets of the world know that I am intellectually superior. I might correct their misinformation, but I'm not going to change in them the fact that they are unable to discern misinformation from actual scientific data.

 

[OreoRosies86]

It isn't even just facebook. I get "work" emails and texts all the time with this nonsense, and then follow up emails inviting me to start a "chemical free cleanse" or whatever the crusade of the week is. Maybe it is petty to be aggravated and I have too much time on my hands, but its how I feel.

 

[monarch64]

It isn't even just facebook. I get "work" emails and texts all the time with this nonsense, and then follow up emails inviting me to start a "chemical free cleanse" or whatever the crusade of the week is. Maybe it is petty to be aggravated, but its how I feel.

Oh, the emails are the worst, I agree. And I don't think it's petty to be aggravated. I don't mean to imply that I have a problem with your thoughts on the matter! I was just trying to say that we can only control ourselves and how we react to things and sometimes it's best to just ignore and move on rather than get worked up over someone being a dumbass online. I have a friend who is an activist and I get a ton of emails from her every week wanting me to sign petitions, etc. I do believe in her cause, and it is legit, but I have my own ways of getting things done and I've explained to that to her in person. If I were getting emails from a co-worker containing what I felt was spam, I would either email them directly and tell them to knock it off or have a face-to-face conversation over a chemical free lunch or something.

 

[momhappy]

I actually don't check FB that often anymore and I just unfollowed people who were constantly posting inane things. Who has time to let people know they're stupid all day long? Not me. And as far as it being irresponsible to just let things go, momhappy, it is not my personal responsibility to let the mental midgets of the world know that I am intellectually superior. I might correct their misinformation, but I'm not going to change in them the fact that they are unable to discern misinformation from actual scientific data.

I guess if I have time to post here all day long - I have time to do a quick Snopes check & copy/paste
However, I really don't see that much crap any more either. Like you, I went through and unfollowed all but a select group on FB. However, I don't want to unfollow some of the worst offenders, which for me, is my parents and mother-in-law. It really only took a couple of Snopes posts though for them to realize that they can easily check on their own, so now I get very few. They don't feel like I'm trying to be intellectually superior because we all know how to do a basic internet search and a cut & paste… I don't mind correcting misinformation, but if others don't care to, that's fine too

 

[OreoRosies86]

No no, I wasn't saying I thought you were calling me petty! I recently find myself thinking "Stop being petty..." when I'm rolling my eyes over some stupid spam from a friend. Petitions are the worst thing ever. I love a good cause and am actually very involved in a charity I feel strongly about, but enough! Kickstarter campaigns too! A guy I used to work with started one to pay for an engagement ring and hit me up for a $10 contribution! I love jewelry as much as the next person, but when I get the bling bug guess what. I work harder.

 

[monarch64]

No no, I wasn't saying I thought you were calling me petty! I recently find myself thinking "Stop being petty..." when I'm rolling my eyes over some stupid spam from a friend. Petitions are the worst thing ever. I love a good cause and am actually very involved in a charity I feel strongly about, but enough! Kickstarter campaigns too! A guy I used to work with started one to pay for an engagement ring and hit me up for a $10 contribution! I love jewelry as much as the next person, but when I get the bling bug guess what. I work harder.

Kickstarter: the interwebz version of panhandling.

 

[Lady_Disdain]

I sometimes feel like this:

 

[ksinger]

I sometimes feel like this:

But no! You simply can't forget the rollover, it's always the best part!

"What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll just keep being wrong!"



I love xkcd...

 

[Trekkie]

It used to drive me nuts. It's good to vent, but it's maybe not so good to get really worked up about misinformation to the point that you become THAT PERSON who calls everyone out and posts snopes.com links in everyone's comments sections. Misinformation has been around forever. The internet is just a relatively new medium on which people pass it around.

Elliot1986, if you were born in 86 you might not remember these, but chain letters sent through snail mail used to be popular. If you broke the chain you were basically sentenced to a horrible life of bad luck or someone you loved would die. That crap used to make me insane and I remember being so flabbergasted upon seeing who was participating because they were typically not total idiots!

I am that person

Can't believe how gullible people are. Drives me up the wall!

 

[JulieN]

Can I vent, too?

WEARY vs WARY. 99.5% people use weary when they want to use wary. The .5% remainder is ambiguous, the poster could mean either.

 

[JewelFreak]

The people who cannot spell. It's SINCE not sense, there is a difference between their, they're and there, and except and accept and allot is not the word for a large quantity!!

YES, groan! Before anyone says how arrogant it is to point out others' mistakes & it doesn't matter anyhow, it does matter: the difference between being literate & illiterate.

Petitions, I don't sign them. Used to, but often read that this or that one turns out to be years old, somebody redistributed it, and it's still sitting on a website, never delivered.

A guy I used to work with started one to pay for an engagement ring and hit me up for a $10 contribution!

Holy cow, Elliot! Too much!

 

[TooPatient]

I think the most annoying part for me is that school children (I used to be an English History teacher) absorb a lot of what they read and don't have the ability to be able to discern what is sheer rubbish and what is true. We used to have to teach them never trust what you read on the internet which is difficult when over half of them insist on using it as a main source for information.

The kids are not being taught to check stuff. "A" is just finishing 8th grade. Her teacher only allows certain sites for research (about two per project) and is teaching incorrect information in class. I don't mean the sort of thing intelligent people could argue about, I mean utterly false information.

I am so sick of being told all about some thing they learned in class and having to ask where the information came from. A teacher should know enough to verify her information before presenting it as fact. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to pull up a trustworthy (and usually multiples) site to get "A" the actual facts... and yet another explanation of how to tell truth from misinformation.

Fwiw, her teacher is in her 20s

 

[orbaya]

What a minute...so not EVERYTHING on the internet is true?????!!!!!!

Sorry I had too, anyone else remember that commercial?

I'm with you, it also drives me nuts. I'm usually pretty good about discussing politics but during election time it drives me bat $hit crazy all the misinformation that gets posted. I always fact check before I post something.

The internet wouldn't lie.

 

[ksinger]

I think the most annoying part for me is that school children (I used to be an English History teacher) absorb a lot of what they read and don't have the ability to be able to discern what is sheer rubbish and what is true. We used to have to teach them never trust what you read on the internet which is difficult when over half of them insist on using it as a main source for information.

The kids are not being taught to check stuff. "A" is just finishing 8th grade. Her teacher only allows certain sites for research (about two per project) and is teaching incorrect information in class. I don't mean the sort of thing intelligent people could argue about, I mean utterly false information.

I am so sick of being told all about some thing they learned in class and having to ask where the information came from. A teacher should know enough to verify her information before presenting it as fact. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to pull up a trustworthy (and usually multiples) site to get "A" the actual facts... and yet another explanation of how to tell truth from misinformation.

Fwiw, her teacher is in her 20s

Husband complains about this all the time - student teachers and their appalling weakness in content knowledge, or blatant ideological bias - a real problem in Oklahoma. (My husband takes enormous pride in his kids not knowing where he stands on politics and religion. He's there to teach them, not indoctrinate them. Not all history teachers subscribe to that, sadly.) He understands that he was something of an anomaly: history-devouring-history-degreed-son-of-a-history-teacher who started late and had planet-time and extra decades of non-coerced historical reading as an advantage, but the last few students he's had have been pretty disappointing in the way of content knowledge. He hates to override a student teacher IN CLASS, but he had to not too long ago, when a student teacher of his just got his facts dead wrong, forget any interpretation, just WRONG. He finds it depressing.

As for checking, well, verifying the veracity of your sources was not an issue when your only source was the library set of the Encyclopedia Britanica (or similar). I was not ever told to "check my sources" back in the day, but then actually printing material imposes certain filters of sheer cost and difficulty on what is printed such that the information seems to have been less prone to BS. Having to be suspicious of information at all times is really rather a new thing. I'm not surprised that a generation raised with the internet is having problems with it, although that doesn't excuse that young teacher.

 

[iLander]

Misinformation can be very dangerous!

At our DD's preschool, I noticed a certain vine that growing (as a weed, not planted on purpose) on the fence of the playground. This vine makes adorable little seed pods that sorta look like orange pumpkins. Fun toy, huh?

Well, I recognized the vine as a highly toxic plant, that will poison those that consume it. I have several reference books about native plants and this was listed as toxic in ALL of them.

I talked to the teacher about it, she said she'd check into it. The next day, the vine was still there, and the teacher's aid said she found it on the internet as an ingredient FOR SOUP! I was shocked! Who would be so stupid as to make soup out of it? Are they still alive? Didn't they notice the warnings on every other website on the planet?

It took some persuading, but they finally agreed to remove the damn vine.

 

[Gypsy]

Can I vent, too?

WEARY vs WARY. 99.5% people use weary when they want to use wary. The .5% remainder is ambiguous, the poster could mean either.

OMG. THIS ONE MAKES ME TWITCH TOO!!!

 

[Gypsy]

The people who cannot spell. It's SINCE not sense, there is a difference between their, they're and there, and except and accept and allot is not the word for a large quantity!!
Also,another one that gets me is when someone posts a question or other statement and a zillion people post the same answer over and over again! Add more info fine, but a slew of yeses makes me nuts.

RT would drive you up the wall then.

 

[arkieb1]

I think the most annoying part for me is that school children (I used to be an English History teacher) absorb a lot of what they read and don't have the ability to be able to discern what is sheer rubbish and what is true. We used to have to teach them never trust what you read on the internet which is difficult when over half of them insist on using it as a main source for information.

The kids are not being taught to check stuff. "A" is just finishing 8th grade. Her teacher only allows certain sites for research (about two per project) and is teaching incorrect information in class. I don't mean the sort of thing intelligent people could argue about, I mean utterly false information.

I am so sick of being told all about some thing they learned in class and having to ask where the information came from. A teacher should know enough to verify her information before presenting it as fact. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to pull up a trustworthy (and usually multiples) site to get "A" the actual facts... and yet another explanation of how to tell truth from misinformation.

Fwiw, her teacher is in her 20s

Husband complains about this all the time - student teachers and their appalling weakness in content knowledge, or blatant ideological bias - a real problem in Oklahoma. (My husband takes enormous pride in his kids not knowing where he stands on politics and religion. He's there to teach them, not indoctrinate them. Not all history teachers subscribe to that, sadly.) He understands that he was something of an anomaly: history-devouring-history-degreed-son-of-a-history-teacher who started late and had planet-time and extra decades of non-coerced historical reading as an advantage, but the last few students he's had have been pretty disappointing in the way of content knowledge. He hates to override a student teacher IN CLASS, but he had to not too long ago, when a student teacher of his just got his facts dead wrong, forget any interpretation, just WRONG. He finds it depressing.

As for checking, well, verifying the veracity of your sources was not an issue when your only source was the library set of the Encyclopedia Britanica (or similar). I was not ever told to "check my sources" back in the day, but then actually printing material imposes certain filters of sheer cost and difficulty on what is printed such that the information seems to have been less prone to BS. Having to be suspicious of information at all times is really rather a new thing. I'm not surprised that a generation raised with the internet is having problems with it, although that doesn't excuse that young teacher.

We have the same problems here as well, I am in my mid 40s but although not all young teachers and student teachers are like this you come across the odd one that also believes everything on the Internet must be true. We are also coming across a wave of young teachers in our country that cannot spell let alone use grammar correctly. Unfortunately bad teachers have always existed in the education system, there are just different areas they can be ordinary in now.

 

[Sparklelu]

The people who cannot spell. It's SINCE not sense, there is a difference between their, they're and there, and except and accept and allot is not the word for a large quantity!!
Also,another one that gets me is when someone posts a question or other statement and a zillion people post the same answer over and over again! Add more info fine, but a slew of yeses makes me nuts.

RT would drive you up the wall then.

Yup!

 

[Sparklelu]

I actually have an poster in my classroom that has the most commonly misspelled/ mispronounced words and a student teacher stopped to look at it, 1/2 way down she looks at me and says.... Is this true?????
Shoot.me.now!