‘The truth can set you free’ – unless social media distorts it?

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Sunny South News

Browse any social media platform these days and there’s almost another national crisis inflicting many with misinformation.This other epidemic is being spread across Canada about everything and anything, disguised as vital anecdotes to your otherwise cloudy day.

Canadians are turning to alternative media, groups and organizations with a battle cry to negate common sense and throw caution to the wind.

Fringe groups, anti-this and anti-that, coalitions and the like are running rampant in society, thanks to our very own reluctance to dig deep and seek truth – because truth is sometimes extremely hard to swallow, like a bitter pill.

It’s dangerous to become reliant upon false pretenses, which some tend to acknowledge as truth. “The truth can set you free” – unless that truth is sandwiched between two pieces of questionable bread and slathered in ignorance. One could wonder how somebody else could fall for a bunch of baloney or malarky – especially a supposedly smart and hip nation. Friends, family members and acquaintances can surprise you with their beliefs, online persona and what they like and dislike online, which is a testament and/or reflection on who they truly are, as a person – trudging through life haphazardly.

What’s important is to dissect the insane, mundane and the good, bad and the ugly. There is so much noise on the Interweb and elsewhere it is often quite difficult to be level-headed, like a wellbalanced breakfast. Distorted reality is how 2021 rolls, but it’s always been that way, hasn’t it? Society has always had the haves and have-nots, the right and left and middle of the roaders, the sayers and the naysayers and those searching for the truth, whatever truth is being peddled through nefarious means. At one time, trash-mags at the front of grocery stores were all the rage, when it came to alternative media.

Now, alternative media is being accepted by many as the definitive truth, which is an alarming proposition. Fact becomes snippets of biased conjunctures based on personal constructions of reality. News and information disseminated to the masses should always be fact-checked and second-guessed, before being accepted as “the truth.”

But, what is more terrifying is the saturation of social media ads, that have no regulation (or so it seems). Enticing social media users with their rhetoric or propaganda wares and wonders. Trying to change the world, one bending the truth post at a time.

To question where the source comes from is imperative when trying to decipher the madness.

As Fox Mulder from “The X-Files” exclaimed with a poster on his office wall, “The truth is out there.” One just needs to know where to look. Of course, that’s subjective and is dependent upon your thoughts, beliefs, upbringing, etc.

The other side to the social media juggernaut is the unsettling notion everybody and anybody has a voice to share with the world on everything. Again, people tend to spout out without any filter and/or fact checking.

Society is so used to saying whatever is on their minds, without any thought of repercussions or ramifications. This is troublesome – and it sets precedent for how information is spread – good and bad and right and wrong.

Facebook and other social media platforms have become the world’s official soap boxes, with no responsibility. Social media has made cancel culture a force to be reckoned with.

Is social media a necessary evil or is it a should we exorcise the demons kind of thing? Its validity to get the word out is becoming less clear, as clarity should be an attribute of good news and information sharing.

Sure, mainstream media has its issues and biases too – but, there is also responsibility attached to published material through traditional means.