Don't Feed the Crazy

Conspiracy theories have been around for as long as I can remember, but something has changed.  

We've stopped recognizing them as crazy.  We've started engaging them as though they deserve our attention.  We've started sharing them without regard to their impact.  Instead of rolling our eyes at the weird uncle who says crazy things at Thanksgiving, we hit share on his post, and because we aren't as crazy as he is, our friends interpret the statement as more credible than they would have it had come from him.  You may have shared it sarcastically or because you thought it was funny without really believing it, but your friends are going to do with it whatever they will.  Social media didn't create spreading crazy ideas.  That's always been around.  However, when you had to say things out loud to share them, it took time to do and died faster because you might not remember to share it with the next set of people or you might think better of it before you had the opportunity.  The spread was relatively linear.  Email made it faster; I remember well the emails I got that started with, "I don't know if this is true, but just in case."  It made the spread faster, but because you had to type in email addresses, you might have shared it with a few dozen people.  If you chose to delete it, it was gone and likely didn't come back up; so the spread was faster than word of mouth, but it was still limited.  Social media has made it possible for a crazy thought to go from one keyboard to a worldwide trend in a matter of minutes.  

Why is this dangerous?  When you feed something, it grows.  When you keep feeding it, it can grow beyond control.  We talk about things going viral as though we aren't part of the spread, but if we hit share, we are part of the problem.  

When was the last time you read an entire article or watched an entire video before you hit the share button?  Most of us read the headline.  Did you check the source?  I don't mean your friend who shared it; I mean the actual source.  Did it come from a credible source, or is it just someone's blog?  (Yes, I'm aware of the irony that I'm writing this on a blog, but I make no effort to make this site look like a news source.)  Do you look at more than the title of the site?  Frontline Doctors sounds like a legitimate source until you remember that it is the home of the crazy lady who believes cervical cancer is caused by dream sex with demons.  Have you asked someone with some degree of expertise, like my friend who sent me a video to ask if I had an explanation for why the snow turned black in the crazy lady's "experiment"?

It seems like I'm asking you to do a lot of work.  I'm not.  In fact, you can do less work.  Don't hit share.  If you do not know something is true, just don't share it.  Otherwise, don't kid yourself; you are just a gossip.  If you haven't looked into the source and don't wish to, just keep scrolling.  You do not have to share something just because you paused at the headline.  You don't even have to reply to your grandma on Facebook with the counter-argument.  Stuff will go away faster if more people ignore it than it will if you engage with it, causing people to dig in their heels.  Every time you reply, it brings the crazy thing back into someone's newsfeed and makes it seem debatable.  If it is crazy, nothing better can happen to it than for it to get no likes, no comments, and no shares.

In short, stop feeding the crazy, and it will die.  Keep feeding it, and it grows.