Sorting Through What’s Important

“Verified” by Mike Caufield was a great read and definitely very interesting. There were many challenging perspectives such as questioning peer-reviewed journals or learning to trust WIkipedia. I was also guided to do a further dive into topics I felt I already knew about such as lateral reading and to continue to just keep questioning. 

“Verified” wraps up with another very challenging topic. What place does emotion have in verifying? Emotions are often triggered purposefully or are used to manipulate certain aspects of media, as expected surely. We all remember pathos in high school and the sad commercials and the enrgaging advertisements for products. However, when it comes to this digital age that continues to feel predatory with our emotions, how do we properly traverse that? Some might argue to leave your emotions at the door and filter through the content with a purely analytical lens, however “Verifed” argues differently.

Something I also found very compelling was how Caufield tackles that issue of feeling overwhelmed with news and media. He brings to perspective that feeling overwhelmed is not just a reaction but should indicate something. Media is something cultivated to be purposefully overwhelming to distract you or deter you from seeking out the information. It’s used as a tool to inhibit finding the truth. It also discourages you further and emotional messes with you. Sorting through the chaos and noise of all the facts or information drains you. Leaving you with less energy to really focus on the matter at hand. Sort of like when you’re using a website and its just overwhelmed with advertisement and half of the time of being on the website is clicking away from ads and finding the tiny ‘X’ marks before you can get to the actual content. However, overwhelming media isn’t necessarily about the advertisements which I can be, it’s usually more information or fluff surrounding a topic. Weaving through so many different stories and angles and perspectives and maybe even bringing up irrelevant information from years prior or even purposefully just sharing false information. It’s important to recongnzie when you’re sorting through a lot of information and sorting through purposefully overwhelming information. 

Caufiled’s conclusion tackled a concept that was sourced from economics, the scarcity effect, but is applied to varying areas, even digital culture. The scarcity effect in summary is when there is an overabunchance of one thing there is a scarcity with another, seeing in rabbits and lettuce or in digital culture– information and attention. 

When there is an overabundance of information there is a lack of attention to go around. So Caufiled suggests that instead of using your attention to verify, be wise and purposeful to what you give your attention to. At the end of the day it is your choice the media you want to consume and what you want to stress out over. It’s about putting attention and intention where you find it most important.