22 June 2012

RESEARCH!

The internet has, from time to time, been called the information superhighway. Or at least it was back in the 90s. But no matter what the name, the internet is still a thing. And it serves a singular purpose: allowing constant unfettered access to pictures, videos and animated GIFs of cats.

There is a secondary “side effect” if you will to this constant feline access. And that is information. Lots of it. More than we could ever possibly need or want. Which is both good and bad. Bad because there’s some scary shit out there. Good because there’s no reason that we can’t find something out. And bad because people still don’t put in the 30 seconds of work it would take to find something out.

The concept of a hoax or rumor is nothing new. And in the days before the intercats it was often hard to get accurate information. But now we have the cat web. And things like Google.

Today I saw a tweet from Tweeter in which the Tweetere tweeted that Starbucks had refused to send some marines some coffee because they did not support the war or anyone having anything to do with it and that people should boycott Starbucks.

I found this to be...unlikely...

A quick Google query indicated that this was, indeed false. The rumor had actually once been applied to Oscar Mayer.

When I was working for Zin someone sent out a company wide email with some kind of PSA about plastic bottles. Something about how looking at them wrong will give your grandmother cancer...or something. But again a quick Googleing showed that it was false, and the professor cited had denied any knowledge of the research, and I think was in an entirely different field.

The point is, boppers, that if something sounds unlikely, inflammatory or downright wrong, you should probably Google it first before you hit "reply all."




Humanity will bring about it's own downfall. They need only wait.

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