Hacker News Reader

Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

I think I’m more shocked by how willing people are to take fringe ideas seriously on the internet. I had a clear moment when new to the internet where I realized it should be taken with a grain of salt. But apparently many people never have that realization or they seemingly choose what they will believe.

View on HN

I've seen it in the family. There seems to be a mentality among people from an older generation to think that if its published somewhere, then it must be true or close to be true.

All their life, they were exposed to newspapers, magazines. Suddenly their habit changed and now they were getting news from the newspaper on the internet. But it was always true or close to be true, nothing was entirely made up.

And then one day, they started getting news from friends on Whatsapp. Links from Youtube shared to them. There was never any change, it's still the internet giving them news. It never occurred to them that some what they were watching was entirely made up.

I remember my wife's mom telling us that Steve Jobs launched the iPad on Dragons Den. Had no idea what she was talking about and then she showed us a doctored video of Steve Jobs at Dragons Dens, showing the iPad to everyone. She thought it was true. And we told her it was made up. And she couldn't understand why someone would spend time creating something false on the internet. She just couldn't understand it.

The really weird thing about this is, that the same people had a few years ago been talking "the internet" down a few years ago. Now the same people believe all kinds of crap from "the internet".

I wonder if it may be our fault somehow by telling them that not everything on the internet is crap.

> old people seem to believe things just because they are published

Yeah, the dumb ones do. That’s not because of the generation they grew up in, it’s because there are dumb people in every generation. There are just as many people in the newest generations who believe anything that comes from the mouth of an authority figure.

Terry Pratchett's books satirized both the "I don't trust the government but do trust the random dude in the bar" and the "they couldn't write it down if it wasn't true" trope for decades. He wasn't the first, I'm sure, just the one that most immediately comes to mind.

Neither of these is new. The scale and velocity is different, in a meaningful way, but "the internet" hasn't changed fundamental human behaviors there.

What if I don't trust the government because I know the random dude in the bar works for the Department of Defense? They should hire better people.

Government positions have to be filled by people who are willing to and can get clearance. This decidedly diminishes people willing to apply and capable of applying.

"Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect" [1]

For some people, the bar is a little low.

[1] https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a15810/tell...

There are alot of mentally ill people in the US that can freely interact online.

I am not sure of the solution, at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com