America’s Students Are Morons Who Can’t Distinguish Real News From ‘Fake News’

a reply to: Mizzijr

Not so much fake, as pushing an agenda. Or, at the least, leaning it towards a particular conclusion.

Other than that, not much to disagree with there. Unfortunately.

I can see a few reasons to intentionally make fake news:

1. money

2. laughs

3. influence people

4. distract

There really are people that will make entire fake websites just for laughs. I mean, despite The Onion being a fake site, people STILL fall for Onion stories.

a reply to: Kettu

I have one child. My wife and I waited until we were in our 40s.

Let me tell you, there is no harder job in the world. Particularly since despite of all of the successes in my life, I still have no clue what the hell it is that I want to be when I grow up. I spend most of my time as a father feeling like a fraud.

But one thing is for sure. We are not the helicopter types at all. When it comes to parenting, we are very old-school.

Accordingly, we have a happy, healthy, intelligent, inquisitive, insurgent living in our household.

a reply to: Kettu

(((((APPLAUSE!!!!)))))


That's where, at the very least, the problem begins.

When I was a kid, I was never home during the summer when the sun was up. We were out and about causing as much trouble, without actually causing trouble, as we could.

Swimming in a creek. Playing in a gravel quarry. Hitching rides on trains around town. Baseball. Basketball. Soccer. If I was home, I was reading some sort of book. I was introduced to writers like Twain, James Fenimoor Cooper. Pearl Buck. Tolkien. Asimov. etc...

My mother, who didn't graduate from high school, was nuts for education. Books. Skills. She taught me so much, not least was not giving two hoots for what others think. She was the prime mover behind getting youth soccer started in my home town. My Dad was much the same. He introduced me to Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and a hundred others.

Small wonder, in retrospect, that I was bored stiff in school. My parents gave two damns about my larnin', something all too many of my "teachers" didn't, or didn't have time to.

a reply to: loam

Accordingly, we have a happy, healthy, intelligent, inquisitive, insurgent living in our household.

Somehow that doesn't surprise me. I've been reading your postings for a long time now, and a happy insurgent as a child somehow isn't at all shocking...

a reply to: loam

I keep waiting for it...but it never seems to happen.

That "moment" or whatever when you look in the mirror and finally say, "Oh wow, I'm an adult now!"

I've come to realize that as a kid I thought at some point you just switched from kid to adult. At some point some kind of change happened.

Now I realize that we're all just people, and all of us really have no clue what we're doing or supposed to be doing -- and all trying to just do the best we can with what we have.

It really puts things like the adults in my life as a child into a new perspective. It makes a lot of the decisions I saw them make and didn't understand then make sense now.

Oh really ?

You telling me that these all are students lol ?

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Whole damn hoax forum is filled with dinosaurs who believe everything they read on the net


No, American right wingers are absolutely champions in swallowing everything their partisan news outlets serve to them

a reply to: Kettu

My parents always warned me that their true revenge would take place when I had children of my own.

So right.

Yup, its funny how life really is, as opposed to how we think it is.

In that regard to the thread topic, time tends to heal much. As this generation ages, they'll be posting similar sentiments...that is, at least I hope they will.

a reply to: seagull

I remember as a kid if I had a question, it was always "let's go look it up and find out!"

I guess that kind of instilled upon me a constant quest for information. And I soon discovered that different sources contained different versions of information. I had to learn how to somehow reconcile between sources and find the common information and disregard things from each source.

I think *that* isn't being taught, or at least encouraged as much these days.

The American middle class now generally has two full-time working parents that sadly are pretty tired and overworked. I know my peers do the helicopter thing, but they also shove the iPad at their kid and expect it'll turn them into baby geniuses.

It's not enough to just shove technology and access to information at a kid. Children have to learn how to formulate concepts. If kids aren't discussing what they've been reading or learning about with Mom and Dad, they're not challenging themselves. If kids are just left to "consume" mode, they're not really engaging or being active learners.

I do know that if I should decide to have kids, I'm playing binary sounds to the baby in the womb and it'll be able to program Python and other languages before it can speak. LOL

a reply to: seagull

Awe shucks. Thank you.

Honestly, I live every day as a parent terrified I'm messing it up.

a reply to: seagull

I Facebook pretty hard. It's littered with lying memes that people take into account as 'news'.

For example, this is one I seen earlier today that has a clear agenda.



Memes like these are worse than the articles. They're being taken for truth just after reading. It's complete garbage.

a reply to: ErrorErrorError

That's another problem for sure -- older people tend to be more trusting of media because of the world they grew up in.

Up until the advent of easily accessible internet "news" most people had 2-3 nightly news broadcasts of 30 minutes to an hour, and maybe 1-2 newspapers per city/town. That's it.

For people that are 40 years+ a great majority of their life was spent with a pretty narrow selection of news, and that news was all there was. It was the window they had on the world. There wasn't really any reason to question it, because there wasn't anyone else saying or publishing anything different.

And I know for people who are even older -- a slick website is all it takes for some to assume legitimacy. They don't know how to make a website, heck they barley can figure out how to make the internet work for them.

On top of that (as if that wasn't enough) ... they have friends and FAMILY members (sometimes younger family members) sharing fake news on their social media. Why would their family and friends lie to them about these things? It must be a true story...

So, you see, there's a lot of reasons and vectors for fake news to take root and cause a lot of confusion in the population.

I predict that what might happen is that people will just start throwing their hands up and ignoring a lot of the news in general (which is dangerous!) because the sheer amount of work it'll take to sort through the crap from the real stuff. Who has the time to sift through all of this? There's a new Avengers movie! The new Sony VR headset is out!

a reply to: Mizzijr

Are you serious? I was just joking about that out loud in my house a bit ago. I was joking someone's going to make a fake meme or news story about it being about slavery to troll people and see how many people get offended or agree with it.

a reply to: Mizzijr

Somehow, I'm not at all surprised.

...and if that's what passes for sources for kids, it's really no wonder some of them grow up pig-ignorant. Not stupid, just, hmmm, ill-informed. Whether willingly, or not.

Stupid is forgivable. You can't fix that. Ignorance is another thing entirely. Ignorance through lack of chance to learn is forgivable, too. Intentional ignorance, on the other hand, deserves nothing but contempt.

That meme? Nothing but contempt for anyone buying into that.

a reply to: ErrorErrorError

Seeing what you want to see isn't endemic to the right, either, apparently.

originally posted by: ErrorErrorError

No, American right wingers are absolutely champions in swallowing everything their partisan news outlets serve to them

You do realize this study was conducted with students in L.A., Minneapolis, and Stanford University right? Far from right winger territory.

a reply to: Profusion

I do not for a moment believe it is only the younger generation that believes whatever they see on their screens!

My husband has a lot of friends in the US that are elderly. (most of them elderly men who are ex military)
They are constantly sending him links to BS articles concerning France that are geared towards the whole "socialism kills" or "bloody civil war happening all over France right now" crap. They truly believe we're all dying in a violent clash with muslim extremists, and unable to get any medical care because of our universal health care system.

People will believe whatever appeals to the ideas they adhere to. It doesn't matter what the age.

originally posted by: Profusion
Seriously, this is a terrible sign for the future. I wonder now about how my posts on this forum could be misconstrued.

How have things devolved this much? When I was in high school things were nothing like what's described in the article above.

Really? Says the man who believes in the Mandela effect? Says the man who ignored all logical explanations given for simple grammar discrepancies with American food and media? Says the man who believe in an imaginary man in the sky without any real evidence for it?

This is the problem with people: they are quick to point the finger and feel all clever and holly, and yet they are guilty of the same behaviour.

Every generation seems to think the younger ones are less intelligent, more lazy, etc. I remember my grandfather saying it, then my father started saying it. Leave youngsters alone, let them live and be happy within their own environments, they will learn and become more wise as time goes.... and like your dear Jesus said:

" He who is without sin can cast the first stone "

originally posted by: Agartha

originally posted by: Profusion
Seriously, this is a terrible sign for the future. I wonder now about how my posts on this forum could be misconstrued.

How have things devolved this much? When I was in high school things were nothing like what's described in the article above.

Really? Says the man who believes in the Mandela effect? Says the man who ignored all logical explanations given for simple grammar discrepancies with American food and media? Says the man who believe in an imaginary man in the sky without any real evidence for it?

What gave you the impression that I believe in "an imaginary man in the sky"?

The Mandela Effect is real according to the following definition:

"The phenomenon where it is discovered that a global, well known fact has apparently changed for A LARGE GROUP OF PEOPLE."

I go by that definition because I feel it's the primary definition that was originally intended to describe the phenomenon.

It's a fact that that has happened concerning many things. You cannot debunk that fact. I believe in it because it's real.

I never "ignored all logical explanations" concerning the Mandela Effect. I considered the arguments carefully. When I felt there was a good explanation for anything pertaining to the Mandela Effect, I admitted it. I absolutely did that on this forum.

You just accused me of three different things. You were right about one of them, and of course I support the Mandela Effect as being real because according to the original primary definition of the phenomenon...it's definitely real.

originally posted by: CriticalStinker
a reply to: ColdWisdom

You took the words out of my mouth.

The curriculum is taught authoritatively, critical thinking and questioning the narrative gets you in trouble.

And God knows those text books are way to cut and dry and don't give the full story on almost anything.

I think curricula and textbooks are supposed to be such.

Another point to consider is that similar, if not more rigid, curricula and materials are used in countries in Europe and in Asia.