An Idiot With An Internet Connection

One of the most powerful, and dangerous things in the world today is an internet connection and an ignorant person with downtime. They neither require knowledge of a subject or any modicum of truth; at best you have the blind leading the blind, at worst you are being willfully taken advantage of by someone that is creating lies and controversy simply because they know you are too lazy to look it up.

Everyone laughs at this commercial and how stupid this girl is, yet they do the exact same thing. Our constitution protects free speech, MLK Jr marched for his right to be heard, women rallied for their right to be heard. Was it all in vain? If Dr King was here today would he be proud of the progress we made as a people, or would he be disappointed that after working so hard and sacrificing so much to ensure that everyone had access to equal opportunities, people are so ready to be spoon-fed mindless drivel without exercising their rights and looking it up? I think he would be disappointed; I know I am.

How many of you have looked through your social media apps and seen an obvious lie that has 10,000 likes or shares? If you didn’t mentally agree with me, you are either: one of the people that believes everything that has enough popular support (wrong answer), OR you carefully select your friends and don’t include those that perpetuate the epidemic of idiocy (I commend you).

What am I saying?

RESEARCH something before you ‘share’ it on facebook, ‘plus one’ it on Google+ or offer your opinion in conversation. If you are too lazy to do that, stick to the cat memes and photos of your lunch that everyone so eagerly views in their newsfeed, and stop sharing lies and half-truths with the people you claim to care about.

I’m not talking about opinions. Pro-Life/Pro-Choice pictures and gun rights comments are fine. I’m even ok with seeing, “Have an abortion, go to Hell” or “Own a gun? You’re a monster!” Why? Because they are clearly opinions. Americans have the right to their own opinions and I love my country for that. Without different opinions and intelligent debate we would stop growing and developing as a nation and as individuals. The key is INTELLIGENT debate. INTELLIGENT. My problem is when people use a gross misrepresentation of the facts or a complete fabrication of facts. Next time you find a bit of information you think is interesting or worth sharing, please look it up! It takes less than 5 minutes and a decent internet connection to check and see if something is true or not. If it’s an opinion piece, take the extra 30 minutes to read up on it. Heaven forbid you cut into your facebook stalking time and become a well-informed citizen. The first step is the hardest; I promise that you will be better off for it.

I beg you, stop being sheep. Stop blindly swallowing everything that the media, and social media is trying to feed you.