Pause Before Sharing

You've been there. So have I. You see something posted on the Internet that comes from a friend, someone you trust. It enrages you. You think, "How can this go on?" Out of outrage, you hit "share."

Then you find out it has been thoroughly debunked. It's an urban legend, something that someone put out on social media for a variety of nefarious purposes.

Maybe they just wanted attention.

Maybe they wanted to stir the pot (think trolls).

Maybe they wanted to demonstrate just how silly people are and how easy it is to get them to go along with something.

Whatever their motivation, they co-opted you into their plans. They took advantage of your trust (and probably the trust of whoever you received it from). Now you have contributed to the spread of misinformation and garbage that befouls the Internet.

At least, most of us don't catch widespread public attention when we do that, so we can just delete the post. But if we have spread that stuff without checking, we have definitely become part of the problem.

Nebraska state senator Bruce Bostelman recently found himself in the uncomfortable position of having been stupid in public. He didn't just spread something on social media, though. He stated on the public record in front of the Nebraska legislature during a televised debate that schools are placing litter boxes in school bathrooms to accommodate children who self-identify as cats. (You can see the video in this Twitter thread.)

I think the key in his statement is the phrase, "I heard." News flash: you can hear most anything! If you ever played the telephone game as a kid or an icebreaker, you know how information can get changed even when people try hard to preserve it as they pass it on. Add to that people who intentionally spread misinformation skillfully designed to sound plausible on some level, and you can easily be taken in. Layer on top of that our innate confirmation bias, and you create a monster practically impossible to tame once unleashed. Even though the perpetrators of the "birds aren't real" hoax have revealed its true intent of revealing how easily people can be fooled, a lot of people remain convinced it's true, dismissing the explanation as one forced by government agents intent on hiding the "truth."

We will talk in another post about a related phenomenon which can make this checking thing even harder. I'll tease it just with this: most of us have heard the news media referred to as the watchdog of society, which is why it is the only industry or business enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Think about this: if you were a thief intending to break into a mansion guarded by watchdogs, wouldn't you do your best to render the watchdogs ineffective before trying to break in? Some people have a vested interest in getting you to ignore the watchdogs, to explain away the alarms.

So what can you do? I was all set to give you a bullet list of actions, but it all boils down to this:

Take the time to check!

Don't get misled by those forces whose basic intent is to get you to mistrust the very tools by which you could debunk their claims. Most times it's just a matter of taking the time to dig a little behind what you're seeing. If Sen. Bostelman had just taken a little time to check (or, more likely, to get a hireling to check), he would have found the claim had already been widely and thoroughly debunked. At a time when faith in government is at an all-time low (although it's usually the fault of "the other guys"), he could have avoided lowering it even further.

He could have avoided looking stupid.

I don't think he's stupid. I think he's human. But we all can be stupid at times.

Here's your bumper sticker reminder: if you don't have time to check, you don't have time to share. Save us all the grief. (That might be something worth tweeting.)

If you're finding The Confidence Cultivator thought-provoking or useful, please share it with your colleagues and contacts. We work to help people engage in clear, confident, effective communication. Contribute to that!