If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
~Dorothy Parker
A while back I was chatting with someone about the memes being passed around Facebook as fact when, in fact, many of them are wrong. Either the quote itself is wrong, or the quote is attributed to the wrong person. Sometimes both.
She said to me that it doesn't matter who said it or if the quote was not passed along in original form but it was the
thought that the meme contained that was important. I disagree. A lot. How does it
help anyone to memorize an incorrect quote, scientific fact, or just plain bad information? If we pass these memes around to
help, shouldn't we make sure they are accurate and not harmful?
Facts are important. Would you like it if facts were left off of your paycheck? Would you like your paycheck to have someone else's name on it?
It isn't just inaccuracies in memes; it is also not real communication. Whatever happened to posting original thoughts? Whatever happened to posting about your favorite book and why it is your favorite, what impressed you, what you didn't like and why. Whatever happened to opening a book or newspaper and quoting someone directly? Whatever happened to passing along the wisdom from grandparents?
Some of the memes contain historical inaccuracies. It surprises me how many of those get passed around by Really Smart People who claim to know their history. I asked someone who passed along one of the historically inaccurate memes if he knew it was inaccurate. He said he was "testing to see if anyone else would catch it." Uh huh...
Memes with medical inaccuracies can cost someone their life. Most of the memes that I've seen with scientific "facts" are not factual. If facts don't matter why send kids to school? Why go to college? If it is just the message that's important then why go into all that student debt when Facebook is free?
A warm, cozy feeling is good. We like warm and cozy. Facts are not always warm and cozy. But blindly, unquestioningly passing memes around Facebook does no one any good. It further dumbs down the human race. It shows that we have, to a large extent, given up thinking for ourselves. We're too quick to trust, and too slow to do a little fact checking. Often these memes are put out there on purpose to fool the gullible--and they succeed.
It often does not take long to do a little checking. Other times you will have to do a bit of digging. Try to use primary sources whenever possible. For instance, there is a meme going around on Facebook that says our cell phone numbers will be made public "this month" and that we will be charged when telemarketers call us. Think about it--this meme has been circulating since at least 2004...which month is the actual month our numbers will be made public? Which year? Instead of blindly passing this along as fact, a good primary source to check would be...your telephone carrier. Or the FTC. C'mon, people! Think!
Take all memes with a grain of salt. Use a little common sense. Do a little research. I will be fact checking many memes and posting them on this blog, hopefully one or two per week. But don't blindly trust what you read here--check the sources, do a little digging on your own.
Are cell phone numbers "going public" this month?
Blog posts © copyrighted 2015 Julie Patrick Clark.
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