This is a great example of the importance of teaching people critical thinking skills.
If you stop to analyze what was written in this sensationalized post rather than acting on your emotions, the first question that should come into mind is “who stopped them?”. There are no checkpoints between Oregon and California where cars are turned away from crossing state lines due to emissions. In fact, that would probably violate federal free travel laws which would supercede any stupid law like that.
Next, consider the source. Is this person trustworthy? Did they provide ample citations to reputable journalistic outlets that verified the factuality of the claims? If not, they may be trying to deceive you with falsehoods or have an ulterior motive for misrepresenting the facts. At best they are repeating claims that they’ve heard from others and anything they report on should be taken with a grain of salt.
This post doesn’t hold up to the slightest amount of scrutiny, but people get fooled every day by crap like this. My advice is that if you hear something that sounds outrageous or too good to be true, stop and think carefully about it for a few minutes, or maybe just wait for another source to report it. Saves you a lot of stress and protects you from endlessly doomscrolling.
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook (reposted from a local list in Arizona) claiming that two people were knocking on doors and beating up people, and one woman was in the hospital as a result. Pictures of the perpetrators and everything.
Something felt off, so I did a quick search on their names. And I found an article from some city in Texas where the same rumor had been circulating about that area. The article clarified that the two people had committed some crimes several years ago and were caught, tried, and convicted already.
So someone took one of these, changed the name of the area, and posted it to the local list. Why do people do this? A form of stochastic terrorism maybe?
Edit - I can’t find the post (I think my friend deleted it), but I did still have a tab open with the article about it.
I have noticed this as well. Back during the early facebook years, a “news” outlet would just generate content by posting stories like “Greenville ranked as the city with highest crime rate” every week or so.
Everybody on my facebook feed would go crazy saying things like “I always knew that town was dangerous, but to hear it outranks New York? TERRIFYING!”
Only issue is that this outlet would have 50 different URLs for the article, all giving a city in a different state (always an immigrant heavy suburb) and those articles would be appear around facebook and nobody would know the wiser.
It costs almost nothing for them to rewrite the world and your perspective about it. The granularity they are now capable of should give us pause.
This is a great example of the importance of teaching people critical thinking skills.
If you stop to analyze what was written in this sensationalized post rather than acting on your emotions, the first question that should come into mind is “who stopped them?”. There are no checkpoints between Oregon and California where cars are turned away from crossing state lines due to emissions. In fact, that would probably violate federal free travel laws which would supercede any stupid law like that.
Next, consider the source. Is this person trustworthy? Did they provide ample citations to reputable journalistic outlets that verified the factuality of the claims? If not, they may be trying to deceive you with falsehoods or have an ulterior motive for misrepresenting the facts. At best they are repeating claims that they’ve heard from others and anything they report on should be taken with a grain of salt.
This post doesn’t hold up to the slightest amount of scrutiny, but people get fooled every day by crap like this. My advice is that if you hear something that sounds outrageous or too good to be true, stop and think carefully about it for a few minutes, or maybe just wait for another source to report it. Saves you a lot of stress and protects you from endlessly doomscrolling.
The firetrucks were allowed through but Haitian immigrants ate them!
You expect too much from these people, and an increasing share of them aren’t genuine people at all.
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook (reposted from a local list in Arizona) claiming that two people were knocking on doors and beating up people, and one woman was in the hospital as a result. Pictures of the perpetrators and everything.
Something felt off, so I did a quick search on their names. And I found an article from some city in Texas where the same rumor had been circulating about that area. The article clarified that the two people had committed some crimes several years ago and were caught, tried, and convicted already.
So someone took one of these, changed the name of the area, and posted it to the local list. Why do people do this? A form of stochastic terrorism maybe?
Edit - I can’t find the post (I think my friend deleted it), but I did still have a tab open with the article about it.
I have noticed this as well. Back during the early facebook years, a “news” outlet would just generate content by posting stories like “Greenville ranked as the city with highest crime rate” every week or so.
Everybody on my facebook feed would go crazy saying things like “I always knew that town was dangerous, but to hear it outranks New York? TERRIFYING!”
Only issue is that this outlet would have 50 different URLs for the article, all giving a city in a different state (always an immigrant heavy suburb) and those articles would be appear around facebook and nobody would know the wiser.
It costs almost nothing for them to rewrite the world and your perspective about it. The granularity they are now capable of should give us pause.