Why don't they ask themselves any questions?
So many people on Facebook throw the most bizarre stuff out, claiming that it’s true, and people get all fired up and don’t even think about it.
One of my HS classmates shared a picture of obviously poopy pants. Looks like the kid had diarrhea. She claimed that a “friend” of hers has a 7 year old daughter who was in school and she had to go to the bathroom and the teacher wouldn’t let her and she pooped all over in her pants and had to suffer that embarrassment from 1:00 until school was out, AND on the bus ride home. No one bothered to call the parents to bring a change of clothes or to tell them their child was, obviously, sick.
Of course, everyone was outraged.
sigh.
I said I didn’t believe the story because the kids interact with multiple adults through out the day. Music, recess, PE, art as well as aides. If I believed it, I would have to believe the entire school was in on it and the bus driver!
“Oh, it happened! It happened to a friend of a friend! Go to her FB page. There are a million comments about it!” (The person with the FB page was not the person who it supposedly happened to.) I guess she thought if a million comments from a million other people who are as gullible as she is proves something.
She was insisting it was going to be on our local news tonight.
She also gave me the name of the teacher and the school district. Of course, there is no teacher by that name in the school district.
Then it turned into “He was a sub, and he got fired.”
Of course I didn’t find a single thing about it anywhere.
I think by the time I was finished commenting, my HS acquaintance was starting to finally question the story herself.
Why don’t people question this stuff?
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6 Answers
Because jumping to conclusions requires no effort, no discipline, no epistemology, no consideration for others-traits that appear to have been lost with the so called Great Generation.
Sounds real Millennial (I’m late Gen X)
And the practice is becoming so common that there is little or no risk of social disapproval.
Actually the 7 year old peed their pants when the sub wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom.
Happens at that age all the time.
Poor kid.
I feel you. I witness this kind of things all the time too. This is how fake news runs rampant, really. But as infuriated as I am at that behavior, I can understand why they are doing that, apart from them being stupid.
First, you have to understand that not many people are able to get access to multiple channels of news like us. Here we have at least two channels, Fluther and Facebook, not to mention other places that some of us may also frequent (like me for instance, currently I’m also active in another forum :P). Having multiple news channels help us discern our sources and choose what to believe. Many people only have Facebook as their news channels, nowhere else to go. Without any way to compare your sources you will take whatever you see as truth. I don’t know about the US but that’s the reality here.
And also, the fake news is specifically designed to provoke strong emotion. They are meant to tap into people’s belief and bias. Take your story above, that story is likely to trigger people who cares for kids and are cynical about the educational system. The news got spread out fast because it confirmed people’s own bias. So it’s just another case of echo chamber here.
And there’s also the factor of laziness here. With news comes so quickly and conveniently, people are less compelled to do further research. What’s the point of digging deeper into that news when it’s already available and detailed on Facebook? I got tons of work to do already.
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