the reason i got out of it was the echo chamber effect, combined with the authoritarian power of the written media. but, both of these problems do have a solution - critical thinking skills. it's only when you add the third ingredient of a public school system that has minimized the importance of critical thinking that we end up with the problems we're facing, today.

apparently, studies suggest that people don't read the articles before they share them, but just get the information out of the headlines. headlines are even more authoritarian than stories, partly because they're so short.

what i found was that it was almost impossible to argue with people using facts once they fell down this rabbit hole of accepting headlines as authoritarian sources of knowledge. they would just respond by repeating more authoritarian headlines. or, the lovely "i don't believe your facts because they contradict the memes.".

i had to stop because i was driving myself crazy. my feed was just full of trash, and i had to debunk it, because i'm like that. so i found myself spending hours educating people that refused to be educated, and eventually gave up altogether.

if we can get to the kids then this shall pass. if we can't? it could be a problem.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-the-pessimists-might-be-right-social-media-may-have-plunged-us-into-a-new-dark-age