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Share and share alike
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dmit it. Most of us have done it.
We see a nice picture, snippet of text or link to a video and share it because it relates in some way to our tastes, opinions or rebellious side.
But, more often than not we file it at the back of our minds to look at later but forget about it straight away. After all, the Internet is so full of 'things', all of them out there, vying for our attention: We cannot be expected to read everything in minute detail or cross reference whatever we stumble upon, can we?
When I was in high school, I remember writing essays and referencing this new, cool website I had found that had the answers to almost everything. The website was Wikipedia.com and I am sure teachers shudder at the thought of an essay based on information from a singular source, not to mention a source that was 'and in fact still is ' heaven forbid, user generated and only loosely vetted.
On the surface, not checking the validity of something on the Internet is not really anything to worry about, after all we can look at a lol cat meme and know that the animal is not really thinking that catchy slogan. But there are occasions when fake, hack and sham information is shared on the basis that it is real: sometimes with humorous results and, unfortunately, sometimes not.
In a recent The Jakarta Post article on Feb. 5, 2014, 'As Mt. Sinabung rumbles on, Mt. Kelud fears rise', we were told: 'On Tuesday [Feb. 4], warnings were circulating through cell phone messaging applications stating that Mt. Kelud's status had reached high alert. The messages were accompanied by a photo depicting a violent eruption.' Although on the surface this seems to make sense, Mt. Kelud did after all erupt, but not until Feb. 14 and the image attached to the message was actually from 2007, the last time the volcano erupted.
Now some could say that this was amazing foresight; perhaps the original poster was some amazing visionary who had predicted the violent eruption that was to paralyze much of East Java less than a fortnight later. The more cynical among us would, perhaps, say this was more like a Peter and the Wolf scenario, or perhaps just a meme gone wrong.
In a country with 127 active volcanoes ' 19 on alert status and three on high alert ' this is no joking matter really, is it?
On the other side of the world ' the UK ' another story was making the rounds, the lede to The Guardian's 'No, the Talking Angela app is not dangerous for your children', encapsulates the mood of the piece: 'Parents beware of 'illiterate and incomprehensible' hoax warnings on Facebook. Especially when they're ALL-CAPS.'
We all have 'those friends' on Facebook. The ones that share the 'get [x] amount of likes for this cause and [x] will happen', and ' yes ' usually their own comment on the cause of their liking is peppered with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Now, I can just about forgive grammatical errors but spelling misteaks (sic), in this day and age, are unforgivable, especially with the advent of onscreen spell checkers ' that lovely red line telling you that the computer knows better and perhaps you should listen to it.
But I digress.
Yes, the Internet is full of things. But we are way beyond thinking that the 'Internet is knowledge.' It is just a conduit. Some things are real and some are not. But it is down to the users themselves to shift through the deluge and cross reference what it is that they are clicking 'repost' on.
The Internet has made us all into wanderers, shuffling our way through a 21st century library of Babel. But with this onslaught of information we have a choice: with each story or image or video that we come into contact with, we can take our time to dissect, cross reference and make our own decisions or we can blindly follow those before us, like a pack of lemmings willingly jumping into an abyss of spurious information.
With just shy of 3 billion people worldwide using the Internet, there is going to be a lot of rubbish. But there are also some gems, which perhaps are fake but should be taken as they are, with tongue firmly in cheek.
The writer is a contributor to The Jakarta Post.
