As IF Times

Source: Facebook, Google Crack the Whip on Fake News

Back in the day, if it was on TV or in the newspapers, it must be true.  The modern iteration of this flawed wisdom now is that a story has validity because it was posted on Facebook.

There’s no denying that Facebook has morphed from a quaint social platform where friends posted their activities and kept in touch with distant relatives to become a commercial behemoth generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue and becoming the de facto village bulletin board for all types of spam.

For many, Facebook has become a compulsion as people out-do each other with envy invoking pictures of recent vacations or thrilling adventures.  Voyeurs and narcissists alike find reasons to be participants.  Naturally, the sheer size of the worldwide audience begged for commercial capitalization and so ads were introduced into the application and next thing you know, your neighbor’s vacation in Thailand is sponsored by Viagra.

People can post only so many interesting things since, well, most lives are dull punctuated by the occasional vacation episode or rock concert, or baby birth.  Enter the introduction of sponsored links and likes.  Now, users can further embellish their profiles by passing on stories, articles and opinions that they ‘like’, causing their contacts to also ‘like’, much like clapping when someone else starts it.

From liking videos of rescued dolphins,  puppies and cats to passing on interesting recipes for kale, the site became more and more a commercial billboard than personal scrapbook. Running out of original content, people lazily forwarded videos and clever quotes instead.  It became a natural place to distribute faux news under the cover of blessing from the social network.

A recent study revealed that more and more people were getting their news from either Facebook or Twitter, fully 67%, up from only 50% two years ago.  What this may mean is that opinion shapers may not be the mainstream media outlets of years gone by. Stories and opinions may now have to go through the gatekeepers on social media with the largest number of followers.

This is only alarming when you find out that among the people with the largest followers are, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Rhianna, Eminem, Shakira and believe it or not, Michael Jackson.

The Facebook company has denied the distribution of fake news even as they promise to eradicate this practice going forward.  A particularly ironic nugget of science offered recently was a story that claimed that accepting Facebook requests would allow you to live longer. I suspect the global warming crowd are moonlighting in their storytelling.  Next thing you know, décolletage images will get un-likes on user pages.

It’s unlikely that Facebook’s influence on shaping social perceptions will diminish in the foreseeable future since the trend is towards short headlines and soundbites rather than in depth personal analysis.  My guess is that intellectual laziness and the pressure of social conformity will contribute more and more to the naïve population we see today.  The echo chamber of opinions is much like inbreeding.  Convenient at first, but eventually leading to undesirable consequences.

Source: Robert De Niro Responds to Trump Win: I Feel Like I Did After 9/11

During elections and especially Presidential elections, candidates are under constant pressure to build arguments in favor of their worldviews.  The logic is that if they can make their case compellingly and with logic, people can be swayed to see things their way.

Turns out that this whole exercise in logic and civility is a complete waste of time.  From the crazed responses ( and there is no way to minimize this ) to the recent election, there is no amount of logic that can appease the nutters who are hard wired in their mental delusion.

From the drama queens such as DeNiro comparing it to 9-11,  and Cher heading to Jupiter to students huddled in mass cry-ins and having stress dogs to pet as well as using coloring books to cope, it looks like a neutron bomb of stupidity was released at some point affecting the cerebral cortex of select parts of the population.

This has been manifest by the hysterical wailing from most in the entertainment business and given voice by a complicit media.  It’s unclear why anyone would consider that the opinions of such intellectual heavyweights as Miley Cyrus and Wanda Sykes are any more important than the guy driving a tractor in Iowa.   The rejection of Trump by the glitterati is not really a rebuke of the man as much as it is a dismissal of the population that voted for him.  It is the height of condescension that was rightfully kicked over in the election like a flimsy sand castle.

A sense of self importance has been de rigeur for years in the entertainment business and is a rite of membership for the most part.  Luckily, regular folk can choose to ignore or discount their obtuse rants.  The unexpected and scary revelation is the frightening degree of extended adolescence among the college set; the pool of future decision makers.

They are taught and espouse a worldview which is clearly delusional and which professes rejection of hatred and ignorance, both straw men of their own imaginations.  When students are taught to think correctly rather than critically, the results will be, well, the snowflakes that are created daily.  It’s a fair guess that many privileged kids in school today live insulated lifestyles supported by parents that quite possibly represent the population they disdain.  If a school needs safe zones and rules against micro-aggressions, then the education is literally not worth the paper that the diploma is printed on. For those students, instead of a mortar board and certificate, perhaps they can be awarded a binky and safety pin upon graduation.