Do you believe it?

[Indofred]

Believing everything you read can make real world problems | The Jakarta Post

Did you hear that North Korea claimed to have landed a man on the sun?.....
....A story making the rounds in the United States concerns the “knockout game”....
..

The piece goes on to talk about fake news stories and the effects they can have.
We see on this forum, so many fake news stories being used to push one agenda or another.
The question is, why do so many people assume these stories are true, without the slightest attempt to verify them?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Believing everything you read can make real world problems | The Jakarta Post

Did you hear that North Korea claimed to have landed a man on the sun?.....
....A story making the rounds in the United States concerns the “knockout game”....
..

The piece goes on to talk about fake news stories and the effects they can have.
We see on this forum, so many fake news stories being used to push one agenda or another.
The question is, why do so many people assume these stories are true, without the slightest attempt to verify them?

Hate to break it to you but the "knock out " game is real.

 

[asaratis]

Believing everything you read can make real world problems | The Jakarta Post

Did you hear that North Korea claimed to have landed a man on the sun?.....
....A story making the rounds in the United States concerns the “knockout game”....
..

The piece goes on to talk about fake news stories and the effects they can have.
We see on this forum, so many fake news stories being used to push one agenda or another.
The question is, why do so many people assume these stories are true, without the slightest attempt to verify them?

Hate to break it to you but the "knock out " game is real.

Are you sayin' the North Korean on the sun story is not true?

 

[Politico]

No.

 

[Two Thumbs]

the liberal media made it beyond clear that they can do stories like that, constantly, knowing that their sheep will buy it, even after it's disproved online.



There's been more than one thread here that was based on an articles title, even though the story going with it had nothing to do with the title

 

[Indofred]

the liberal media made it beyond clear that they can do stories like that, constantly, knowing that their sheep will buy it, even after it's disproved online.



There's been more than one thread here that was based on an articles title, even though the story going with it had nothing to do with the title

Most of the daft stories I see on here are posted by the more right leaning members.

 

[Mac1958]

.

This topic is fascinating to me on a variety of levels - psychological, sociological, anthropological - as it pertains to contemporary partisan political discourse.

First, partisan ideologues generally avoid exposing themselves to ideas and opinions that differ from their own. That's why the roster of stories covered by MSNBC and FOX are so consistently different. They know their audiences and they cater to them in terms of news content.

Why are partisan ideologues so reticent to expose themselves to other ideas? Ego, narcissism, a lack of true conviction, a lack of curiosity, intellectual laziness. They just don't want their opinions challenged, and they're sure as hell not to going to sincerely challenge their own opinions.

But to address the question posed by the OP, and more interesting to me, is whether these people actually believe the obviously distorted things they say. I'm more and more convinced that it's possible that they really do. This began to hit me when I was reading a book about the subconscious, which discussed how our subconscious can literally be trained to believe something completely different.

Moreover, the "training" exercises discussed in the book dang near mirror what I see partisan ideologues doing every single day: They say the same things over and over, they say them with absolute passion and conviction, and they block out contrary thoughts and information. Bingo, that's precisely what the book says to do to train your subconscious.

When it comes to stories they read and hear and see, they will then completely believe the information that comports with their opinion and absolutely disbelieve all information that does not. Sincerely, at a foundational, subconscious level.

So yeah, I think it's possible that many of these people actually believe this stuff.

.

 

[Asclepias]

When you look back at history you can see the ruling class knew about this phenomenon at least before the day they created Christianity and probably further back. Its an extremely effective tool for crowd control and the same principles are what is used in modern day advertising.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

There's an excellent documentary that describes how so-called news and op/ed internet purposely keeps us afraid and upset. Recent article about big pharma advertises in such a way as to make us afraid and make us believe we're sicker than we are.

My bet is that more than 98% of internet content is non-factual.

Its not easy to sift out the facts but we all need to try.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

The confirmation bias.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Believing everything you read can make real world problems | The Jakarta Post

Did you hear that North Korea claimed to have landed a man on the sun?.....
....A story making the rounds in the United States concerns the “knockout game”....
..

The piece goes on to talk about fake news stories and the effects they can have.
We see on this forum, so many fake news stories being used to push one agenda or another.
The question is, why do so many people assume these stories are true, without the slightest attempt to verify them?

Hate to break it to you but the "knock out " game is real.

But, the whole point is to make people believe its happening all the time, in all places, no one is safe, yadda yadda.

Just like, for example, identity theft, child abduction and a lot of other things that have people afriad and spending money on whatever it is they are told is the fix.

Yes, all these things happen but not in the huge numbers the snake oil salesmen tell us.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

the liberal media made it beyond clear that they can do stories like that, constantly, knowing that their sheep will buy it, even after it's disproved online.



There's been more than one thread here that was based on an articles title, even though the story going with it had nothing to do with the title

Most of the daft stories I see on here are posted by the more right leaning members.

I suspect the fault is not that rw's are just more gullible. Its that they're fear and hate and just a general high level of hysteria is fed by rw media.

Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge, Alex Jones - they all routinely publish stories that are patently untrue and they present them as though they are fact. And, you'll never see a retraction. If anything, every single one of them will double down on their lies.

While MSNBC does have very left wing opinion pundits, their daytime programming is quite a mix. There are right wing journalists as well as right wing guests.

Post an article from AlterNet or NPR and certain posters get crazy. But, if you actually read AlterNet and NPR, you find that they're really not left wing at all. Especially NPR.

With MSNBC, AlterNet, NPR - you do have to pay attention but their content is not red OR blue.

 

[Iceweasel]

Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge, Alex Jones - they all routinely publish stories that are patently untrue and they present them as though they are fact. And, you'll never see a retraction. If anything, every single one of them will double down on their lies.

If you believe that you're truely gullible. Those are individuals, not "the right wing". No nutty shit from the left? Are you serious?

 

[Sunni Man]

Post an article from AlterNet or NPR and certain posters get crazy. But, if you actually read AlterNet and NPR, you find that they're really not left wing at all. Especially NPR.

With MSNBC, AlterNet, NPR - you do have to pay attention but their content is not red OR blue.

LOL........surely you are joking!! ..

 

[Indofred]

The left, right, various religious groups and whoever, all publish crap to suit their point of view.
On this forum, it's mostly the right wing who spout crap but I was a member of another that was equally guilty, but left wing.
I was a member of a Muslim forum that had posters who linked to total crap about Jews and we see Jewish leaning members here that do exactly the same but about Muslims.

As was said about Fox, any specific forum caters for whoever wants to hate whom.

The only real question is; why are people so stupid as to believe it?
I know some do because they want it to be true but why do others?

 

[norwegen]

An old Korean friend of mine resurfaced the other day. I don't know where he was, but he looked a little darker than I remembered him.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge, Alex Jones - they all routinely publish stories that are patently untrue and they present them as though they are fact. And, you'll never see a retraction. If anything, every single one of them will double down on their lies.

If you believe that you're truely gullible. Those are individuals, not "the right wing". No nutty shit from the left? Are you serious?

Where, EXACTLY, did I write, "No nutty shit from the left?"

 

[Iceweasel]

If you believe that you're truely gullible. Those are individuals, not "the right wing". No nutty shit from the left? Are you serious?

Where, EXACTLY, did I write, "No nutty shit from the left?"

What was your point then? People generally make comments to make some kind of point. My point was that selectively picking individuals or comments don't represent the whole anymore than nutjobs on MSNBC represent anyone but themselves.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

If you believe that you're truely gullible. Those are individuals, not "the right wing". No nutty shit from the left? Are you serious?

Where, EXACTLY, did I write, "No nutty shit from the left?"

What was your point then? People generally make comments to make some kind of point. My point was that selectively picking individuals or comments don't represent the whole anymore than nutjobs on MSNBC represent anyone but themselves.

You cherry-picked one paragraph from my post.

The paragraph you chose listed some of the pundits who represent the views of much of the right wing and the one who is arguably the leader of the right. And, its simply not possible for anyone to view Fox as anything but a poorly done spoof of real news. They are SNL but not purposely funny.

I'm not interested in having the same old argument here as occurs on the rest of the board. If you are interested in my "point", address the entire post as well as the earlier posts in the thread.

 

[Iceweasel]

You cherry-picked one paragraph from my post.

The paragraph you chose listed some of the pundits who represent the views of much of the right wing and the one who is arguably the leader of the right. And, its simply not possible for anyone to view Fox as anything but a poorly done spoof of real news. They are SNL but not purposely funny.

I'm not interested in having the same old argument here as occurs on the rest of the board. If you are interested in my "point", address the entire post as well as the earlier posts in the thread.

Yes, I picked the comment that I wanted to respond to. That's how it works in reality. You do not get to dictate how people respond. And hating FOX doesn't make you look smarter.