facebook in rants

We’ve all heard the expression, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true”, well in social media, “if it sounds TOO crazy to be true, it probably isn’t true”. Since many politicians are coming out with ideas that seem very crazy if you’d studied even high school level science and history, this is something that isn’t always true - often they are saying things that are crazy.

And satire sites are having a field day. The Onion (both a newspaper and a website) always has weird articles - often SO weird they’re clearly satire and meant only to be humorous. There are other sites that are not as well known.

When someone takes a clip from a satire site and posts it on a page like Rachel Maddow (pundit from MSNBC), her regular readers FREAK OUT. Everyone has something to say, and what they have to say is SO important that they don’t read ANY comments ahead of their comment.

At least 10 times, I posted “hey folks, this isn’t true, it’s SATIRE!!” to no avail. The stupid comments just kept on coming. Why I am stubborn and couldn’t let it go - well, that’s part of who I am. At this point I am trying my best to ignore further comments - let stupid people BE stupid.

If there’s no way to check the source of something weird on social media, check with snopes.com before passing it on. They check the weird stuff out and post “true” or “false” with an explanation.