WAIW | Fake News From the Left?
As much as I love having folks engage with the content I post online, I’m always disappointed when I see just how many people are reacting to, sharing, or commenting on something compared to how many actually clicked the link. If Facebook and other platforms are to be believed, which maybe is a bad idea in and of itself, then a large proportion of people are spreading content based solely on the photo and/or headline.
Given how often people, including the president of the United States, accuse others of “FAKE NEWS” these days, it’s upsetting to see that plenty of folks from the left (I assume most of my audience leans that way) are comfortable with sharing content that they haven’t even read.
As I’ve said plenty of times before, confirmation bias is a tricky thing, but we really need to work on dismantling it within ourselves and others. Simply agreeing with something because it ticks the boxes of our worldview is not the way to convince others that we’re right. If our sources turn out to be unreliable, flimsy, and maybe just downright wrong, then we’re only helping to strengthen the views of those opposing us. When you think about what’s at stake, taking the time to be critical of the things you share really isn’t too much to ask.
