Stuff like
- Braces for teeth causes cancer 20 years later
- Root canals causes cancer
- Cars have a poisonous gas when under the sun for too long
- Fake/Plastic rice being distributed in Singapore
- Etc etc
The news about the fake rice is that it is counterfeit rice. The news article did not mention anything about plastic rice. The report mentioned that the rice was packaged in some other brand's packaging and was being sold as such.
Similarly. Counterfeit LV bags are also made of leather (most of them), they are just being sold as something which they are not.
So the counterfeit rice thing, well... no one said anything about plastic rice. The hoax spreaders just jumped on the bandwagon.
Ok so what do I hate more than fake news?
Well, the people who spread the fake news.
Like seriously? It's not that hard to just search a bit to find out if something is true or not before forwarding it to your friends/relatives.
Fake news is so sensational, people just like to spread it. And now, it's so easy with Facebook and all the social media. But really, is it that cool to spread fake news?
If everyone just put in a little bit of effort to just counter check the news. Especially the unbelieveble news, we could stamp out this fake news problem and prevent it from propagating. It also shows respect to your audience, the people whom you forward it to.
And next is when I tell people to stop sending me fake news and do some fact checking first.
People end up telling me, I just sent it to you for you to take note.
Or, if you don't like it I don't send you anything else next time.
Or, why should I do any fact checking, you want you check it yourself.
Look seriously. This is just bordering on unreasonable.
Since when did we become like this?
1) Spreading news or info is now like a fashion parade. You want to share news, real or fake to gain acceptance by others. To share news that others haven't heard of before. So that others heard it from you regardless of what news.
2) I think we learnt critical thinking in school. Someone tells you something, if it doesn't sound logical, you check up and read up on it first before telling others. Really, and the thing is, it's even easier to check stuff up now than it used to be. But somehow people aren't checking. They just share first.
3) People get defensive by me telling them to fact check first.
Ok so maybe to them, they are doing me a favour by sharing it with me.
So for me to tell them that it's BS and check first sounds ungrateful on my end.
So really, please, do yourself a favour and do society a favour to stamp out fake news/hoaxes.
It's like if everyone does some form of checking all these nonsense won't be spreading.
Isn't that a good thing?
If it's a good thing, then why aren't you doing it?
(You being the folks who spread fake news like my friends and relatives)
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