Here’s something we’ve all learned in the last two decades. The more information is in front of you, the more wrong information will be there as well. The idea that the internet would be this broadly trustworthy library free for all to use… well that sounds good but it didn’t come to pass. The internet, as we all know, is just as good at spreading false statements as it is at spreading true ones. Sometimes false statements spread faster than true ones, because they somehow feel better to believe. That’s part of the science of memetics, which concerns itself with how information spreads as if it were a virus.
At one time or another we’ve all believed something that wasn’t true, and we may have even spread false information ourselves unwillingly. If you were around in the pre-internet days you might have honestly believed that “Mikey” from those old Life cereal commercials (see below) was killed by eating too many Pop Rocks.
If none of those words make sense to you, you’re probably under 40. Don’t worry, your generation has its own falsehoods to spread.
For the record, Mikey lives
There have been several interviews over the years with John Gilchrist, the former child actor who played Mikey in 1972. Doing a little math, he’d be 54 or so today. I wasn’t able to track him on LinkedIn or Facebook, but I do believe he lives. Why? Because I read it at snopes.com.
What is snopes.com?
Snopes.com is an advertiser-supported web site that dedicates itself to debunking urban legends. It started as a collection of posts from creator David Mikkelson, who adopted the username “snopes” back in the 1980s.
The site has become a well-respected source for debunking urban legends. If you’ve ever heard that train track distances are based on horse’s hooves, or that “adidas” stands for “all day I dream about sex,” you can find stories about these urban legends at snopes.com. (I’ll save you the trouble– both of those are false.)
There are also a fair number of fact checks of political stories, which isn’t surprising given the way things have gone the last couple of years.
Should you trust snopes.com?
The site is generally considered among the fairest and most well-researched sites on the internet. However, the lesson to be learned is that you should never use a single web site as a source for anything. You should always look for several sources to try to confirm or deny anything. Not only that, you should look at those sites carefully to make sure that they’re not just quoting each other. Seeing ten web sites that all say the same thing sounds great, but all too often they’re all just confirming the same rumor because another site says it.
But, I will say that snopes.com is a fun web site, a good place to spend a few minutes or a few hours researching urban legends. It’s been running non-stop for over 20 years and you’ll find stories on virtually any subject. Personally, I find its political coverage to be fair. It seems to deflate the most pompous claims you’ll find from any of the more extreme groups. But that’s just my perception, and I never use it as the only source when I’m navigating the rough political landscape we have today.
