I had the mentality that "the internet never lies". I had the hope and belief that people were good and didn't deliberately post lies on social media platforms with the intent to deceive.
I was very wrong.
Eli Saslow writes in his article about a man who writes absurd news articles for his political satire facebook page in order to make fun of the who share and like these articles without knowing they are fake.
In reality, there are many people who just scroll through Facebook and just see posts with giant black bold headline that reads something absurd like
"Hillary Clinton had died during a secret overseas mission
to smuggle more refugees into America."
and immediately believe what they read. It creates excitement and
becomes a topic of conversation and just like that, the news is spread.
I, and many people I know have fallen victim to this.
Even today, I catch myself sometimes taking
an article as absurd as this, screen-capturing it and
sending it over to my friends and family. Because in reality
who reads the whole article? There are so many people who have
liked and shared the post so it has to be true!
As ridiculous and maybe entertaining it may be to watch people
share these types of news across social media. I think it is very
unethical to post intentional lies and bullshit on social media.
Taking advantage of people's gullible nature and trust in other
people to get a "kick" out of it is unnecessary.
America
Hi Jess, great post! I agree with your argument as to how we tend to believe what we see online without taking the time to verify the source of information. Some things to improve on would be to add some more images throughout the post, so it engages the reader more. There are a couple of formatting issues as well(e.g. 'news is spread' in paragraph 6) and I would recommend bolding some of your transition phrases like 'I was very wrong' to better elicit the reader's attention. Lastly, I think you did a great job weaving the Saslow article into your post, but it might help to draw on another reading to better explain your ideas of why it might be unethical to post lies on social media.
ReplyDeleteThe rumor mill effects people everyday just through word of mouth, not to mention through the internet, and while it's not all lies its the ridiculous amount of information that creates such issues.
ReplyDeleteHi Jessica! I really liked the topic you chose for this blog and how you started off your writing from talking about your experience. Also, you did a great job on adding information from the readings and even had a link to the article. I think to make this blog better, you could add in more images to engage the readers with better contents.
ReplyDeleteYou do a great job of adding your personal experiences to the post. However, your argument doesn't appear until the end of the post. You should try and incorporate it earlier in the post and maybe even weave a snippet from the reading into your post! Also talk perhaps talk about why you think it's unethical to post intentional lies on the internet.
ReplyDelete