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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A matter of fact

I have come to the conclusion, and this is just my own opinion, that everything is just opinion. My own radical opinion is that there is no such thing as "fact." And all of the crap bouncing about on the Internet is just one big hairball that people keep coughing up on your living room floor.

I'll wait while you savor that visual image.

There used to be a time when I could read a newspaper (when there still were newspapers) or watch television news (when it was actually news) and trust that it was factual or at least factual in nature. But as the former president once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and you have fooled me again." He was such an idiot.

Point is, that digital report, social media, blogs, Facebook and Twitter have rendered fact a fossil of the dying world of print journalism. I feel stuck in a bizarro dimension of editorial writers spouting their opinions about everything. And the mindless masses pick up this drivel, place it on a pedestal and begin bowing to it.

I am sick of opinions about the economy. I am sick of the stock market. I am sick of the debate over socialized medicine. And I am sick of the war on terrorism. I am sick of lies in general. I don't want to hear the latest cause for cancer or seven ways I can drop 10-pounds in 10 minutes. I don't care if your mop picks up more dust per minute than the old mop. I don't want a leopard print snuggie or snuggle or whatever you call the moronic blanket with a hood they are hawking on television and at finer stores like WalMart. It looks like a freakin' monks habit.

I don't trust your tips on safeguarding my retirement or looking for mold spores under my refrigerator. I don't want to turn an empty toilet paper tube into a convenient way to store computer cables. I don't want any more of your useless information.

Ironic isn't it?

2 comments:

R. said...

You could follow the fossilized main stream media outlets and continue to be disgusted by the undigested bits of food, cat hair, and [citation needed] they hork up in spasmodic reverse gear episodes or you could change your expectations.

The information is out there. You just have to do the digital equivalent of visiting a library, using the card catalog or magazine index and scan through stacks of material to extract the sources you're interested in.

This is not as convenient as having a predigested news report regurgitated into your wide open eyeballs but it does allow for a certain degree of control on your part.

You can filter by keyword on twitter. Local news reporters use twitter to share details that were removed from their articles by editors. People report police and fire calls.

There are websites where people report weekly specials at their local grocery stores.

K. uses Google Alerts to filter out a lot of the noise from subscribed media.

I generally only care about specific things so I follow the blogs, websites and mailing lists of the researchers or organizations that are actually involved. That way I get the information directly from the horse's mouth. I do not watch television news.

More than once I've actually picked up the phone and called a complete stranger to ask questions; it's not like long distance calls cost much any more.

Having shared my opinion Sir I'll be getting off your lawn now.

JP/deb said...

It is all subjective ... life. We're just more aware of that 'fact' than ever before!