Remember the early days of consumer internet? Compuserve, America Online, dial-up modems, and "You've Got Mail." Then there were bulletin boards, and then out of the primordial electronic soup came social media (and some not-so-social).
We sent each other cat memes (and still do) and epic fail video clips, as well as a variety of 'thought you'd like to see this' items, whether they were liked or not. Our need to tell them exceeded their need to care, but no matter.
Newspapers and television (cable and/or otherwise) were for serious news until, at some point (I always think the attacks of 9/11 were the impetus), we were afraid to be alone with our thoughts. Every waiting room, be it a doctor's office, the lounge at the fitness center, the arrival/departure terminals in airports, everybody had a news channel on, not that they were paying attention to those screens, as we fixated on the screens of our smartphones.
Somewhere, we decided that if we read it online, it had to be true. Some bozo named Sergei, sitting at a computer somewhere in Carjackistan, had as much credence as a reporter for the New York Times. And the longer we've lived, the more dense (and opaque) the information sources have become, until we can't tell fact from fiction.
And for many, far too many, that's a good thing. Dishonest players in the media arena don't want to argue truth from lies; they want to confuse us so we can't distinguish between them until we give up.
Don't let them win.
-bill kenny
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