I am starting to thimk Facebook – and other social media platforms – are making people, well, for lack of a kinder way to put it – stupid. Or maybe it’s just exposing how stupid some people are, I can’t decide.

Social media is a good way to share things with friends and family (and depending on your privacy settings, maybe the entire world). It’s also a platform to share important information such as traffic alert, bad guys law enforcement are looking for and missing people. Unfortunately,

there are a lot of people who do not have the sense to LOOK at an article before they click the share button.

Up pops a shared post about a missing person – the thing is, the post might be weeks, months, even years old – and had the person who shared bothered to actually click on the link they shared they would have seen that the person was found safe/had returned or been returned home. And recently I saw a shared post about an interstate accident which had the road closed – an accident had happened over 24 hours before the post was shared….

Then there are the posts about a famous person who passed away as though it just happened when it happened several years ago. Or those that say someone passed away when they are very much alive.

And let’s not forget the messages of all sorts some idiots send to everyone on their friends list – because they received it from someone else and the message said to send it to everyone…..

Another thing is seeing a post (that often sounds wonky to start with) all upset and indignant about the content of an article they linked that comes from a website that outright says it’s a satire site…..

I think everyone is ‘guilty’ of having a “whoops!” moment online, posting something false or unverified. It happens, we’re human and there is a lot of bullsh*t out there. But consider this – sharing old articles as though they are current without bothering to LOOK at the article first to see it’s a resolved issue tells me the persoin who shared it wasn’t concerned enough to read the article they shared. I suppose they just wanted to post something…..anything…..

#facebook #twitter #socialmedia #fakenews #commonsense