Verified-9

“Remember that both the con artist and the propagandist feed on the impatient, because time to investigate and reflect does not favor liars” – Caulfield and Wineburg

So Many Feelings

Everyday online feels like facing a tsunami of emotionally volatile content while being expected to maintain 1) a “good” opinion on the happenings of the world and 2) an encyclopedic knowledge of context and content.

Being aware of content isn’t the key to ‘successfully’ navigating the internet, BUT being aware of the methods used to draw you in to certain content is. Emotions run high and it’s not always just the anger and sadness you need to pay attention to. The happy dog video seems great and you may even hear a claim that the smiling pitbull was bread to be a “nanny dog,” a lie that has been floating around for a few decades. There is really no benefit to the lie, but it still makes its way into pitty circles.

Emotion is not a bad thing, though. Yes, we can be mislead if we solely trust our hearts and not our minds, but that does not mean we can’t use out emotions to better help us understand what we are interacting with. By taking what you find compelling (Caulfield and Wineburg) and adding a bit of thought, we can develop a better sense of what actually matters to us. If you read an article about a current topic and find a claim that makes your gut drop…well now you know what to look up and verify! Feeling can help us narrow down what is important to us, and help guide us in the lateral search process. Be aware and use what you find with that awareness to better understand what matters to you. Many people use emotion to try and get the better of their audience, but it is helpful to be aware that this is happening while also using what we know about ourselves and the content to actually be better researchers.

Context and AI

In the era of AI, we are all susceptible to falling for a video or photo made by a prompt. It was the case before that if you saw a video too good to be true, there was a chance it was edited from a legitimate video into something more compelling. We now have to compete with videos that have no attachment to reality other than what data was fed into the processor. It is still important to be aware of context when it comes to photos and videos (especially videos), though. It may be assumed that someone with a high position, say a governor of a state, may be quite cognoscente of what he shares so as to not mislead the public, but it is important to understand what is actually happening. Hate to break it to you, but a soldier just pulled out of a foreign nation after ejecting from an aircraft is unlikely to be smiling with his buds a few hours after escape. Even if you missed the AI-ness of the picture, the context surrounding it is fishy enough to alert you to some foul play (intentional or not).

AI also has little track record. Let’s say you see a video that seems too good to be true (a cat doing back flips, maybe), but you don’t know how to check if it is AI. Many AI creators will crop out the watermark of the site they used, but that is something to look for in case they don’t. Beyond what is in front of you, a quick search can help to determine what is actually going on. If there really was a cat that could do back flips, that is something that would likely create a pretty big impact online, but if when you do your search of “cat doing back flips” you only find articles that link back to the same video you saw…it may not be very real. Date can also tell us a lot. If something is claiming to have been around for an extended amount of time, but the only info about it is from super recently, that can indicate some sketchiness.

I think… I’m Going to Ignore that

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” – Herbert Simon

Attention is not something you can force yourself to give beyond what stores you currently have. It may feel like it is important to keep a constant eye on the political machinations of twelve nations, including your own, while also maintaining a good grasp of the goings on in your community, and oh don’t forget to keep track of that meme that keeps developing every two hours… but all this work will only drain you. Yes, being well informed is great, but maybe it would help to take a step back, and chose what you want to focus on and what you want to throw in the bin. This is not lazy or inconsiderate, it is a useful tool to prioritize what space you have in your brain for what is important to you. If you keep seeing posts that just make you mad, even if the topic is real and relevant, but the feeling of anger is just being pushed by the creator, it may be a good time to take what you need and leave the rest (as my tarot reader loves to say). I may be mad that we have governors who don’t pay attention to what they post, but does it do me or anyone else any good to continue to follow the story? The answer is very much, no. Your time and energy is valuable, so divest it carefully and purposefully.

There is no time like the present to chose awareness. Be aware of what you see and consume. It is not as demanding as it may seem at first and it will lead to a better relationship with the internet if you try. AI is everywhere and there are still human created lies floating around the internet, but there are ways to sniff out a majority of the b.s. and find what is 1) true and 2) important to you.