This is actually a pretty interesting topic.
I was born in 1982 and we didn’t get the internet until 1998. Which means I was a kid and teen in a mostly analog world.
Your day to day knowledge was formed by things you were taught in school, the things you saw on the news and the people you were surrounded by. That gave you a fairly broad understanding of the world.
If you really NEEDED a correct answer, you’d use an encyclopedia at school or the library, or any specific book on the topic. But you had to be motivated to do that. And even those resources might be limited in scope or unavailable. My local library in the Netherlands would’ve had some books on US history for example, but you wouldn’t really find say, a biography of Jimmy Carter. So at some point, you’d reach the maximum depth of knowledge to be gained in your particular situation.
The internet really helps us drill down way, WAY deeper than what we could find in the 80’s and 90’s. I can now have in-depth knowledge on the most obscure topic and drill down as far as I want.
It’s unfortunate that a lot of people don’t use the web for that. Or end up actually misinformed because of it.
My high school in NZ was pretty poor, so even in the early 00s, we still had Cold War-era maps of Europe in textbooks and on the wall, and no access to the internet (computers were taught to us as glorified typewriters). It took until I was older than I care to admit to learn that Czechoslovakia was no longer a thing.
When I graduated HS, the map on the wall in our history class still had “French West Africa” on it (textbooks were at least more up to date :-)) “French West Africa” hadn’t existed for . . . looks it up . . . about a quarter century before then.
Damn, before I was even born!
“Why is the sky blue?”
“Because it’s reflecting the colour of the ocean.”
Why is the ocean blue?
Because it’s reflecting the colour of the sky.
why does it hurt when i pee?
It’s reflecting the colour of life.
Red pee means you have sinned.
Damn
We got misinformed at a much slower rate though. The newspapers could only tell us so many lies at a time.
Doesn’t misinformation involve intent? Aunt Marge probably thought she was right.
no, thats disinformation. disinformation is willful malicious intent to spread misinformation, knowing that its wrong info in order to achieve a certain result(such as propaganda by russia, or giving wrong intel to an enemy). misinfo is just saying potential info that may or may not be true, and no fact checking, and just ignorant to the info.
The reporters who propagated lies about WMDs in Iraq or beheaded babies in Israel probably think they’re telling the truth or something close.
People made a living selling encyclopedias door to door. Just saying.
And encyclopedias before wikipedia had a whole pile of wrong garbage information in them. Because they were compiled quickly by people with little knowledge about the field they were compiling the information for.
Wikipedia is garbage as well when it comes to topic from third class country
Might be. Classic Encyclopedias were worse. Don’t know if you ever used one and looked up stuff for a subject where you have above average expertise. They only contained very surface-level information, rarely more than a paragraph or two, and what they contained was riddled with errors.
The problem with internet is,it didn’t made people any smarter.earlier they were victim of misinformation ,now they are victim of propaganda and all sort of fake shit.honestly a undergrad book would surpass internet any day for most part
The literal Nazis might have a word to say about propaganda not existing before the internet. Fake news too.
Yes, it’s now easier to publish fake crap to a wide audience, but fake crap being published has been an issue since before the invention of the printing press.
Even the original crusades have been organized via fake news propaganda.
The internet gives you access to huge amounts of information, and you need to have the media literacy to figure out what is sensible and what is not. But that has always been an issue.
Growing up, my grandma had a huge library in her house. We once tried counting them as kids and gave up after 4000 books. Almost all of that is pure crap. Almost all of the books are non-fiction, most of them are books on alternative health and new age spiritualism. It’s mostly just weird stuff, but literally none of that is worth the time to even read the cover.
The things is state,nazi,brahmins or whatever ,these people commands lots of power of flow of information on internet ,you cannot stop their propaganda online.when i was kid i learned that fasting is healthy for us and kill cancer or whatever after reading many article and post on internet ,but now i am grown i realised it was all bs,and how do i got to know all that ? Pure logic and books.
I think surely internet is good thing when complimented with books,when i say books i mean like campbell biology,jd clayden chemistry,feynnman physics like these,we have plan ,but on internet everything is random,i can bet no one who rely on the social media,and popular edzy video would be able to do 1 percent what a nerd is capable of,isnt it?
Entire reddit is filled with pseudo intellectual garbage,we have twitter pure filth,then other platform like insta facebook. You cannot learn much from it other than general facts which can be wrong as well.see long story short internet doesn’t teach you temperament. Its just a bad place for learning tbh
I think surely internet is good thing when complimented with books,when i say books i mean like campbell biology,jd clayden chemistry,feynnman physics like these,we have plan ,but on internet everything is random,i can bet no one who rely on the social media,and popular edzy video would be able to do 1 percent what a nerd is capable of,isnt it?
You are applying an unfair filter here. As I said above, there are millions of garbage books out there too. You can find books on any subject that say anything, including that fasting is healthy and kills cancer.
But you only count good books as books, but you don’t apply the same filter to the internet. Same as with books, there’s garbage on the internet, but there’s also great sources on the internet. Media literacy is required for any medium to discern garbage from decent content, and anyone needs to know how to find good sources and how to do proper research no matter which medium you use.
On the internet, finding sources is at least much easier than in books. If a book cites some other book as a source, you need to go to the next university library and hope they happen to have that book in store, otherwise you are often SOL. On the internet, most sources are readily available or at worst behind archive.org.
The things is state,nazi,brahmins or whatever ,these people commands lots of power of flow of information on internet ,you cannot stop their propaganda online.
Yeah, but that’s again the same with any media, including books. Remember, the literal nazis had very advanced and very successful propaganda, and there was no internet in sight back then. “Mein Kampf” was a book and it was everywhere in Nazi Germany. “Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind” was a parenting guide book that was given to every mother in Nazi Germany, and the horrific parenting “tips” in there messed up multiple generations of Germans. Books can do just as much harm as any other media.
Entire reddit is filled with pseudo intellectual garbage,we have twitter pure filth,then other platform like insta facebook. You cannot learn much from it other than general facts which can be wrong as well.see long story short internet doesn’t teach you temperament. Its just a bad place for learning tbh
Wikipedia has baseline knowledge for pretty much any topic. University websites freely share research papers. Tutorials on pretty much any topic are all over Youtube, blogs and other sites.
Want to know how to repair your washing machine? Good look on finding a book on that, but there’s a Youtube video for your exact model right there.
Want to know the specifics for some obscure camera control protocol? Sure, right there on some random blog, or you can just download the original specification.
aunt Marge has been replaced by AI now
Before there was the Internet there were libraries. Your main reference books were dictionaries for looking up proper definitions of unknown words. Then you had encyclopedias for general topics. To get really specialized you had to consult the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. That was an index organized by topic of magazine articles, including scientific ones like Nature. Reference librarians were very helpful in finding specific information in a hurry, and there were some books that couldn’t leave the library.
It’s better than what we have now though, which is going “I think elephants are actually seals that got lost on the way to the south pole” and then going on the internet and searching until you find exactly what you already believe, and then forming a social group around that, then voting in politicians who think that until that stupid belief becomes mainstream and there are politicians debating in congress whether to invade Kenya to transport all the elephants to Antarctica.
Well-fucking-said
Its not a coincidence that flat earthers have had their greatest recruitment numbers in the modern era
“breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”
https://marketingmadeclear.com/kelloggs-marketing-lie/
tl;dr: it’s fucking not.
related: you’re not going to 100% die (or even get sick. yes really) if you skip a meal (or even 2), fatass.
edit: i have to add another thing
diamond engagement rings are absolute 100% bullshit, which, as a genXer, i only learned later in life. i wouldn’t be adding this if there weren’t still way too many people who are completely bamboozled by this fake “tradition” invented solely to make obscenely wealthy people even more obscenely wealthy.
Regarding to the diamond ring thing: Most “old traditions” or “old traditional things” aren’t actually old at all. In most cases, something that has been done for longer than you are alive counts as “old tradition”, because we don’t experience the past through history books and facts, but through our experience and through what adults told us when we grew up.
There have definitely been studies linking breakfast to various positive lifestyle outcomes, but that doesn’t mean you need 9 grapefruits and 4 bowls of kelloggs flakes. I don’t eat breakfast much myself but most of what I’ve run across has shown that it’s beneficial.
for kids i would agree, it makes sense that it’s better to have breakfast than not–their brains and bodies are actively under construction and need all the macros. but for the remaining 60+ years of life, there are studies supporting the notion that breakfast is optional: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-skipping-breakfast-bad#TOC_TITLE_HDR_2 all claims are cited
ultimately everyone should do what they want, but be skeptical of the “you must eat breakfast” claims bombarding everything everywhere, made by industries that have much to gain from everyone eating breakfast, and almost as much to lose from not everyone eating breakfast.
I had people arguing with me about blue blood long after the internet was available to everyone. I wouldn’t ever tell them they were stupid, but I would say, “I don’t think that’s right” and they would usually say they learned it in biology or a science class in high school and I would say, “that still doesn’t sound right. We should look that up later when get home to our computers” and then They would look at me like I was the idiot for suggesting they were misinformed in school… because you know… school teachers NEVER misinform their students… like ever 🙄
Speaking of misinforming your students; shout out to Miss O’Leary for saying Russia could Invade Canada with Tanks because we were landlocked during the colder months via the arctic.
Fuuuuck. I need to have a look online. I still thought that was true.
45 - UK - sometimes acts like an adult. Obviously has a lot of garbage stuck in my brain.
Edit. FUCK. Yup, not blue. Optical illusion.
Speaking of misinforming your students; shout out to Miss O’Leary for saying Russia could Invade Canada with Tanks because we were landlocked during the colder months via the arctic.
For anyone wondering, no it doesn’t freeze over in winter but there are chunks of ice you can hop across that might eventually get you to the firmer ice along the respective shores:
https://angusadventures.com/adventurer-handbook/beringstrait/
shit I still remember a primary school classmate explaining to me:
one sneeze is from dust
two sneezes in quick succession are from cold
three sneezes in quick succession are from allergiesIt’s been 30+ years, someone pls remove this nonsense from my brain 😩
four sneezes means someone’s thinking of you
five sneezes means someone’s cutting peppers
six sneezes is anthrax
seven sneezes is the absolute physical maximumEight sneezes is instant death.
Common misconception. Actually 7.99999… is instant death.
You can’t reach 8.Nine sneezes means you are in Hell, unfortunately. You have already been dead this whole time, and your torture for this moment of eternity has been temporary amnesia and experiencing the sudden terror of realizing you are sneezing yourself to death. That price of darkness can be a rascal like that.
I had a professor that gave a student $100 for reaching 7 sneezes. His previous student record was 6.
Did anyone try to fake sneezing after that was known?
Ha. Yes. But then Prof called them out on it after the 2nd sneeze.
Didn’t happen again after the first $100 went out.
I saw a video of a dog sneezing 30 times in a row
Edit: found it! Glorious video of dogs sneezing https://youtube.com/shorts/4UoFDUbWFHQ
that dog is a prophet now
I’ve never heard of that, but I’ve kind of used it for children. If it’s winter and you hear you kid sneeze, do not worry. If they sneeze again, they are probably barefoot some something, go check on them. 3 times they are either already sick, or allergies
Your face will not get stuck like that.
It is not illegal to turn on the light in the car while driving.
Bears do not sleep all winter long.
Bats are not blind.
Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day.
Searing a steak does not seal in moisture.
Waking a sleepwalker is not dangerous to their health.
:)
Washing the literal chicken shit off of mushrooms does not make them absorb water.
Seriously, wash your fucking mushrooms.
It is not illegal to turn on the light in the car while driving.
Wtf is this idea xDD Are you supposed to stop the car at the side of the road to turn on the lights? 😂
I feel this may be an American thing. Many millennials have a shared experience of being told by our parents that we can’t have the dome light on in the car at night because it is illegal. In reality, it reduces visibility on a dark road for the driver so it is a little dangerous to do but certainly not illegal.
I just wanted to play my Gameboy Advance on the drive home!
Ah I missed the “in the car” part, I thought car lights in general. It makes a bit more sense this way, thanks for the explanation :)
Masturbating won’t make you go blind.
Correct, it makes you grow hair on your palms.
Then when they look at their palms you laugh and make fun of them for masturbating. My grandad got me with that classic.
This one had me freaking the fuck out as a kid lol
You won’t get cramps if you jump in the pool soon after eating.
Bats are not blind.
But they may as well be. So many midair collisions cause they’re absolutely bonkers flyers
My biology teacher taught me that peanut oil causes cancer. Can’t get that out of my brain 30+ years later.
Encyclopaedia sets were expensive but there were all sorts of things you could subscribe to for facts. My parents subscribed me to an animal fact thing where i got some sheets to collect in a folder every month. I’d read the hell out of it and eagerly wait for the next issue. It allowed me to memorise a lot of information about animals.
I also visited the library a lot more before the internet, and there was also Encarta which died as soon as the internet became mainstream.
This is the reason a lot of people have got fat, and also died.
And don’t even ask us where we found porn.
We found it in the woods, naturally
Why is this such a common thing!? Who were these woods porn fairies? Mine was just a few ripped pages me and a friend found while digging randomly in the woods as kids, but still - boobs.
Same here! In hindsight, it’s so incredibly random to stumble across hustler and some other more hard-core magazines in the woods. My 8-9 year old brain wasn’t able to process all that very well…
We got it from Reggie. Don’t ask us where Reggie got it
My family had a full encyclopedia that they bought one book at a time right around when I was born in the 80s. By the time I was 10 it moved into my bedroom and I’d often stay up too late reading random things.
Downside was that it was already out of date geopolitically by the time I started thinking about politics.
