Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticCat
Ah, youth. 
I grew up in the land of Jesse Helms -- I remember when he did editorials on the local news, before he got into politics. He was bringing out heaps of crazy from the far right and the far left long before Bush or Obama came along.
FWIW, I think the main thing that's different is the internet, which makes it much easier to dissiminate the crazy. Twenty-five years ago, people pretty much had to rely on print media, radio or word of mouth to get the crazy ideas out there. TV wasn't going to cover it too much. But now you can email the latest absurdity to all your contacts as a WARNING of SOMETHING WE CAN'T LET HAPPEN. There are websites upon websites chock-full of ABSOLUTELY TRUE inanities. The internet has no filter, and it makes it much easier to spread the crazy around. |
I agree. I'm somewhat optimistic that we'll adjust and develop an appropriate level of skepticism. We survived yellow journalism as a country before; there really isn't a golden age of objective information we can point to as far as I'm concerned. We just need to learn to handle the volume of really bad information. I think we will.
I am concerned about fragmentation of the general culture as we all chose the sources that we consider reliable, but that's an issue for another thread maybe.
Hybrid Mode
