Before there was the Internet there were libraries. Your main reference books were dictionaries for looking up proper definitions of unknown words. Then you had encyclopedias for general topics. To get really specialized you had to consult the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. That was an index organized by topic of magazine articles, including scientific ones like Nature. Reference librarians were very helpful in finding specific information in a hurry, and there were some books that couldn’t leave the library.
We got misinformed at a much slower rate though. The newspapers could only tell us so many lies at a time.
Doesn’t misinformation involve intent? Aunt Marge probably thought she was right.
My biology teacher taught me that peanut oil causes cancer. Can’t get that out of my brain 30+ years later.
Encyclopaedia sets were expensive but there were all sorts of things you could subscribe to for facts. My parents subscribed me to an animal fact thing where i got some sheets to collect in a folder every month. I’d read the hell out of it and eagerly wait for the next issue. It allowed me to memorise a lot of information about animals.
I also visited the library a lot more before the internet, and there was also Encarta which died as soon as the internet became mainstream.
This is actually a pretty interesting topic.
I was born in 1982 and we didn’t get the internet until 1998. Which means I was a kid and teen in a mostly analog world.
Your day to day knowledge was formed by things you were taught in school, the things you saw on the news and the people you were surrounded by. That gave you a fairly broad understanding of the world.
If you really NEEDED a correct answer, you’d use an encyclopedia at school or the library, or any specific book on the topic. But you had to be motivated to do that. And even those resources might be limited in scope or unavailable. My local library in the Netherlands would’ve had some books on US history for example, but you wouldn’t really find say, a biography of Jimmy Carter. So at some point, you’d reach the maximum depth of knowledge to be gained in your particular situation.
The internet really helps us drill down way, WAY deeper than what we could find in the 80’s and 90’s. I can now have in-depth knowledge on the most obscure topic and drill down as far as I want.
It’s unfortunate that a lot of people don’t use the web for that. Or end up actually misinformed because of it.
My high school in NZ was pretty poor, so even in the early 00s, we still had Cold War-era maps of Europe in textbooks and on the wall, and no access to the internet (computers were taught to us as glorified typewriters). It took until I was older than I care to admit to learn that Czechoslovakia was no longer a thing.
aunt Marge has been replaced by AI now
“Why is the sky blue?”
“Because it’s reflecting the colour of the ocean.”
Why is the ocean blue?
Because it’s reflecting the colour of the sky.
why does it hurt when i pee?
It’s reflecting the colour of life.
Damn
I had people arguing with me about blue blood long after the internet was available to everyone. I wouldn’t ever tell them they were stupid, but I would say, “I don’t think that’s right” and they would usually say they learned it in biology or a science class in high school and I would say, “that still doesn’t sound right. We should look that up later when get home to our computers” and then They would look at me like I was the idiot for suggesting they were misinformed in school… because you know… school teachers NEVER misinform their students… like ever 🙄
Speaking of misinforming your students; shout out to Miss O’Leary for saying Russia could Invade Canada with Tanks because we were landlocked during the colder months via the arctic.
Fuuuuck. I need to have a look online. I still thought that was true.
45 - UK - sometimes acts like an adult. Obviously has a lot of garbage stuck in my brain.
Edit. FUCK. Yup, not blue. Optical illusion.
Speaking of misinforming your students; shout out to Miss O’Leary for saying Russia could Invade Canada with Tanks because we were landlocked during the colder months via the arctic.
For anyone wondering, no it doesn’t freeze over in winter but there are chunks of ice you can hop across that might eventually get you to the firmer ice along the respective shores:
https://angusadventures.com/adventurer-handbook/beringstrait/
“breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”
https://marketingmadeclear.com/kelloggs-marketing-lie/
tl;dr: it’s fucking not.
related: you’re not going to 100% die (or even get sick. yes really) if you skip a meal (or even 2), fatass.
edit: i have to add another thing
diamond engagement rings are absolute 100% bullshit, which, as a genXer, i only learned later in life. i wouldn’t be adding this if there weren’t still way too many people who are completely bamboozled by this fake “tradition” invented solely to make obscenely wealthy people even more obscenely wealthy.
shit I still remember a primary school classmate explaining to me:
one sneeze is from dust
two sneezes in quick succession are from cold
three sneezes in quick succession are from allergiesIt’s been 30+ years, someone pls remove this nonsense from my brain 😩
four sneezes means someone’s thinking of you
five sneezes means someone’s cutting peppers
six sneezes is anthrax
seven sneezes is the absolute physical maximumI had a professor that gave a student $100 for reaching 7 sneezes. His previous student record was 6.
Eight sneezes is instant death.
Common misconception. Actually 7.99999… is instant death.
You can’t reach 8.
It’s better than what we have now though, which is going “I think elephants are actually seals that got lost on the way to the south pole” and then going on the internet and searching until you find exactly what you already believe, and then forming a social group around that, then voting in politicians who think that until that stupid belief becomes mainstream and there are politicians debating in congress whether to invade Kenya to transport all the elephants to Antarctica.
Well-fucking-said
Its not a coincidence that flat earthers have had their greatest recruitment numbers in the modern era
Now you are permanently overwhelmed by a tsunami of misinformation spewing out of your addictive phone instead. Progress.
If you can’t find the right information from the internet then skill issue
All the people replying to you arguing that you can’t trust the internet because of AI and Algorithims… this too is a skill issue. Stop going to Google or MSN or Yahoo There are search engines that don’t use algorithms or AI, and others that don’t use algorithms and you can turn off the AI.
It also helps to understand WHERE you are getting your information from and use watchdog sites that can tell you if a site is a reputable source or not. Heading over to I’Mright.com isn’t going to help you unless you’re looking for confirmation bias.
Exactly!
Sadly, I gotta disagree. Searching used to be easier, back when search engines prioritized finding useful information. Now they are vehicles for delivering ads and collecting user data.
Google of the early-2000s era was an entirely different site. I used to be able to find almost anything I needed to search for. As far as I’ve seen, there is nothing comparable to that early-Google out there today. (Though I’d be ecstatic to be proven wrong on that!)
Yeah I would agree with the other person 20 years ago. If you couldn’t find it online it probably didn’t exist
Unfortunately Google is still the king of search engines. Try searching for most technical facts or most common issues or anything else on most search engines and you really can’t find it. You might find some things but you won’t find the amount of information you can find on Google. The problem with the internet nowadays is not that searching has gotten worse, it’s that there is such a plethora of information out there that you have to have the right skill set to be able to go through it. The reason you were able to find everything in the olden days was that there was so few websites out there that it was very very simple to search all of them. And the counterpoint to saying that there is a plethora of misinformation now when you’re looking at your phone simply means that you’re visiting websites and looking at sources that have a plethora of misinformation. It is very very simple to cross reference and find the correct information pretty much anywhere.
Searx is my way to go when i need to do research, it’s a search engine, that takes results from others
I would have agreed with you about 15 years ago when everything on the Internet wasn’t AI slop, calculated misinformation spread by foreign governments, and white supremacists using memes to spread their ideology.
Just disable AI slop from you search engine or stop using google and such, learn how to make un-biased searches, start to understand how to spot a fake information and start questioning what you read
Already do that shit, bro. It isn’t a justification for that trash to exist in the first place. And what the hell is a “biased search”?
I never said that it’s a justification lol, anyway, biased search is when you search something like “Is X better than Y” or something like this, which is wrong to do because it’s biased and so it will give biased results too
Example:
If i search “is tomato more healty than potatoes?” Instead of “The pros and cons of eating tomatoes and potatoes” i will get biased results that will mostly say “you should eat only tomatos!!!”
Who defines the “right information”? The algorithms? The information conforms to what your peer group is saying is the “right information”? It’s consistent with what government agencies are saying?
We really aren’t any better off than just believing what aunt Marge said since you can find the exact same thing she said and things the exact opposite and which one you believe is just down to what feels right. It’s just believing what aunt Marge said with more steps.
ultimately, every individual is responsible for what they choose to take as truth. this is why there has been such an aggressive assault on critical thinking in favor of “parental authority”-- just believe what you’re told and stop asking questions.
it’s not that hard to separate the plausible from the questionable, from the obvious bullshit.
as an example, dr. fauci is a doctor. he’s been a doctor for decades, has risen to high positions in the field, has been producing research, also for decades, which has been cited by other experts in the field frequently. and, prior to bullshit claims by trump and the entire GOP, was never the subject of any controversy.
so the discerning mind has no trouble concluding that it’s reasonable to assume that fauci, who knows what he’s talking about and has no apparent reason to mislead the entire world, is a credible source of information, while trump, a notorious conman who told 30,000 verifiable lies in his first term alone is absolutely NOT. so the GOP preaches “vaccines are bad,” and the “patriotic” american says “vaccines are bad”
yes it’s fucking mind-bogglingly stupid, but the problem isn’t a lack of availability of information, the problem is information literacy–the skill (yes skill) to separate truth (even if only “likely” truth) from fiction (even if comically obviously fiction). which the GOP is actively, deliberately, visciously undermining, while no one says a thing, because we’re preoccupied by nazi gestapo trump cultists rounding up innocent citizens because they’re brown
Your face will not get stuck like that.
It is not illegal to turn on the light in the car while driving.
Bears do not sleep all winter long.
Bats are not blind.
Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day.
Searing a steak does not seal in moisture.
Waking a sleepwalker is not dangerous to their health.
:)
Washing the literal chicken shit off of mushrooms does not make them absorb water.
Seriously, wash your fucking mushrooms.
Masturbating won’t make you go blind.
Correct, it makes you grow hair on your palms.
Then when they look at their palms you laugh and make fun of them for masturbating. My grandad got me with that classic.
This one had me freaking the fuck out as a kid lol
It is not illegal to turn on the light in the car while driving.
Wtf is this idea xDD Are you supposed to stop the car at the side of the road to turn on the lights? 😂
I feel this may be an American thing. Many millennials have a shared experience of being told by our parents that we can’t have the dome light on in the car at night because it is illegal. In reality, it reduces visibility on a dark road for the driver so it is a little dangerous to do but certainly not illegal.
I just wanted to play my Gameboy Advance on the drive home!
You won’t get cramps if you jump in the pool soon after eating.
And don’t even ask us where we found porn.
We found it in the woods, naturally
We got it from Reggie. Don’t ask us where Reggie got it
Dad: “I don’t want to be in a club that would have me as its member”, Karl Marx said that
We only use 10% of our brains.
Yep. The rebuttal that stuck with me was “We only use 33% of traffic lights.”
We only use 10% of our brain at a time. Because using 100% of your brain is called a seizure.
Source: Once used 100% of my brain.
Or a really good orgasm.
Or a really bad shit.
Tbf, they might have been right about themselves at the time they thought that.
My theory is they were sitting at around 5% usage.
Even that is a common misconception. Our brains are working fully, all the time.
Not if you’re MAGA.
Our brains are working fully, all the time.
Hey, speak for yourself
