Ok. We admit it. Not everything you read on the web is true. The truth (if you can believe it) is that fake stories abound, and there’s no telling how much b***s*** you might come across on a daily basis. Some examples:
· Feminists call for an end to Father’s Day! Sure they do. ‘Course, who are the “feminists” anyway? Who knows, maybe they have their own Facebook page. Pretty much nobody was fooled by this one, except Fox News, who jumped on the nonsense in a nanosecond. The point here is that if you want something to be true, you’ll believe it no matter how stupid it sounds to a rational mind.
· Thanks, Obama! The President has been blamed for a lot, from the arrest of a man accused of domestic violence in Florida, to the (allegedly) obscene performance of Miley Cyrus on MTV. Before you pass info on to your friends (to impress them with how much you know), you might want to dig a little deeper into the stories.
· Boy, 13, hires hookers with dad’s credit card! No, the story wasn’t that the kid wanted the hookers (@$1,000 an hour) for sex; that might have rung some bells. The news flash was that he needed someone to play Halo with, and this apparently made the story believable enough for many media outlets (Thanks, Obama!). In fact, the story was created out of whole cloth by an internet marketer.
If you were not wary of internet “facts” before, perhaps these examples will cause you to be just a bit more suspicious – at least to look (research, that is) before you jump (pass the info on to others as fact). But here’s the bad news. Just thinking about the factual worth of a particular newsy piece will not protect you when it comes to ascertaining the truth (of falsity) of a story. And here’s why: truth sometimes is stranger than fiction. Here are some truths that may appear questionable at first glance, but are nevertheless right on the mark:
· Cleopatra’s birth was closer in time to the creation of Facebook than it was to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. True, by about 500 years, in fact.
· You are twice as likely to be killed by a vending machine as by a great white shark. True enough, when you consider the entire United States. But be careful about statistics. This is clearly not the case if you live in Kansas.
· Sliced bread is the greatest thing since Betty White! Well, maybe not, but Betty (born in 1922) is six years older than the marketing of the first bread-slicing machine.
· President John Tyler (1790 – 1862), the 10th president of the United States, has two living grandsons, at least he did as of the end of last year. How could it be true? Tyler had a child at age 62 (by his second wife); his son, also married a second time, had a child at the age of 75.
· Humans share more than 90% of their DNA with chimpanzees. Does this provide conclusive proof for those naysayers who deny evolution, and believe that Adam and Eve played with dinosaurs? Well, maybe, but consider this: we also share 50% of our DNA with bananas.
If you ‘re a blogger, or write in any capacity for the internet, the upshot of all this is that you can’t just take things you see at face value. Do your research, and don’t be afraid to think for yourself!
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