So does it? Does the internet make you stupid? Over the past few months I’ve had some very intelligent conversations about the internet; luckily I have some very intelligent friends who don’t rely on the internet as complete fact, or spend time scrolling on social media or drive off cliffs using their Sat Nav.
I was around a long before the internet, I was around a long before mobile phones. A friend who is a retired opera singer often gets asked why there are so few clips of him singing opera on the internet. He says it’s a real forehead slapping moment and he gets the urge to say “duh”! He started his career in the early 90s long before the internet OR mobile phones. Video cameras on mobile phones were not commercially available until around 2004, there were early models but the quality was poor. My friend in fact retired from his opera career in 2008. People record all kinds of events these days but I have to say that opera is still not a popular upload on YouTube. I saw him sing in Tosca at a festival in Lucca in Italy in 2006. There were no mobile phones in the auditorium, people were engrossed in the show. So when he gets asked repeatedly, “why isn’t there a video of it” I believe the response should a sharp slap to the face. It’s opera, who in God’s name wants to disturb the brilliance of Puccini getting out their mobile phone.
The same friend was recently challenged by someone he knew on his birth history as well as almost the entire history of his family because a) that persons’ mother had never heard of his family and according to the individual his mother knew “everybody”; and b) that person couldn’t find any information on the internet. Which brings me to a point. Do people these days realise that anything on the internet has to be put there by someone and it isn’t necessarily accurate. I could set up a web site about anything, literally anything, publish it and no doubt some moron will take it as truth. In the case of my friend, did the individual challenging his entire childhood think of checking with a reputable source such as the Registrar of Births, Deaths & Marriages. Apparently not, if it’s not on the internet then it can’t be true.
But this is become so much more common. If you want facts, go the source of the information. Don’t EVER, and I mean EVER, rely entirely on the internet.
Now I’m not a big internet person but I had a very successful career. A Google search reveals very little about me; but that’s because I’ve never really published much on the internet and no-one’s ever really written about me on the internet, hence I have almost no internet presence. Then there are numerous search engines, what one search engine brings up may not even feature in another.
Pedro Ruiz who was 22 at the time had asked his girlfriend Monalisa Perez to shoot at him with a gun from around 30cm away, he was holding a book which was about an inch and a half thick and he thought the book would stop the bullet, that the video would go viral and he’d make a lot of money. Holding the book up to his chest his girlfriend fired one shot; the bullet went right through the book and into his body killing Pedro Ruiz. Monalisa Perez spent time in jail for her part.
To me there is stupid and then there is STUPID. Some of the wonderful things you’ll find on the internet today include bringing back lead paint because it protects your home from radiation from all the 5G towers; germs don’t actually exist because no-one has ever observed one, they’ve never been proven; a comment on a photograph in which someone asked how they managed to add clouds into the picture, they responded by telling them they had taken the picture outside; someone asking if gravity is actually real then why doesn’t the ocean go down to the southern hemisphere; someone asking why you can buy a birthday candle in the shape of a zero (0) because you can’t actually be zero years old; someone on Facebook asking the length of a couch they were interested in buying, the seller responded saying it goes from the wall to the door.
The internet has its uses but it also really needs to come with a warning label; the same kind of label that these days comes with appliances, like the way my iron came with a warning not to iron clothes while wearing them.
The internet is capable of anything but for me, misinformation is the worst. Don’t be that person otherwise evolution is likely to take a giant leap backwards.