The dark side of social medial

In the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, an unpleasant, unneeded, and unwanted phenomenon occurred. Thousands of people were using social media to inspect, investigate, strip down and evaluate every single shard of video evidence from the bomb blasts and to develop their own suspect list, which was universally wrong. Many people were incorrectly implicated in this horrible event and, in some cases, their lives have become permanently sullied because of it.

These are the consequences of social media gone wild where there are no editors, no censors, no fact-checkers and no follow-up. Anyone and everyone is free to say whatever they wish and accuse anyone they choose without having to prove anything. They do this more for a sense of personal notoriety than they do to help solve a problem.

An unnamed moderator for social media's Reddit website posted this shortly after the explosions:

"It's been proven that a crowd of thousands can do things like this much quicker and better ... I'd take thousands of people over a select few very smart investigators any day."

He was wrong.

I think, in a way, people have copied the raves and antics of the real media where an outrageous headline will sell more newspapers or magazines or get more people to listen or watch a radio or television show. I've cautioned people about this for years but it seems to fall on deaf ears because we believe what we want to believe and damn any evidence to the contrary.

If someone says it and it supports our own perspective, we believe it to be true and pass it on. We tell our friends and colleagues and then we spread it through email and social media, just like the Boston vigilantes did. I read at least one message on social media or email every day that says "I didn't fact check this but it sounds right to me."

It sounds right because it plays to our biases and prejudices, whatever they might be. And I know when I read that they didn't fact check it, it was because they wanted it to be right and they were afraid if they fact-checked it, it might turn out to be wrong. So they spread erroneous and wrong-headed information to as many as they can because they want the rumor to be true and, by doing that, they make the rumor true, at least to those who believe as they do.

Locally, whenever someone tells me a tale about someone else, the first question I ask them is how do they know that and they always respond that they heard it from someone who heard it from someone else. Everyone loves a juicy piece of gossip and hardly anyone fact checks it either.

This has become so epidemic that even the major media has gotten caught up in it, reporting rumors instead of facts.

The next time there is a tragedy, write down the things you hear from the major news organizations immediately after the event and then check back a couple of days later to see how much of it was true.

I've been doing that for quite a while now and you'll find out the same thing I have; that most of the initial information is false. They feel so compelled to get information out as quickly as possible and to beat their competitors with a good story that they fall into the same trap the rest of us do.

We know what the answer is to solve this problem. If all of us demanded accountability and responsibility in reporting the news, whether it's being done by the mass media or the social media, this rush to judgment would eventually stop. But that's not going to happen because too many of us love the rush to judgment. We love to tell our friends something they don't know, whether it's true or not. We get caught up in the emotion of the moment rather than using rational, analytical thought which we all have but most don't use.

The thin segment of our society who does use it is law enforcement. They certainly follow leads and even hunches but they follow them based on a plan of attack that's designed to get at the truth.

Because of that, they don't release information until they know it to be true. If the rest of us would use that simple, common sense approach, we would all be much better off in the long run.

Unfortunately, as far as common sense goes, the well seems to be running dry for far too many of us.