#oneaday Day 934: Stop, Check and Check Again

The social Web is an incredibly frustrating place to be at times. I’m aware that I’ve commented on this subject a number of times before, but it’s important: the spread of misinformation is at best irritating and at worst incredibly dangerous.

The most recent example was a result of this image:

This image has been doing the rounds recently — first on Twitter, where the supposed exchange took place, and subsequently, as tends to happen, a day later when Facebook’s denizens caught up with the rest of the Internet.

It is, of course, bollocks. This exchange took place, oh yes, but it was not between Piers “Cuntface” Morgan and Bradley Wiggins. No, instead, this is what happened:

You have doubtless noticed that the person who replied to Piers Morgan was not, in fact, Bradley Wiggins, and was instead one Colm Quinn, who just happened to mention Wiggins in his tweet, which is where the misunderstanding came from — probably from someone who doesn’t quite understand how Twitter works. (Ending the message with “@bradwiggins” could look like a “signature” to someone not familiar with the way a typical Tweet is structured.)

As usual, however, the fact that “BRADLEY WIGGINS GAVE PIERCE MOREGAN AN AWESUM COMEBAK” makes a better story than “SOME DUDE YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF GAVE PIERS MORGAN AN AWESOME COMEBACK” struck, and it struck hard. The (inaccurate) story spread like wildfire, of course, with no-one bothering to actually check Wiggins’ timeline to see if he actually said the things that were attributed to him. And it spread. And spread. And spread.

Over time, some people got wise to the truth of the matter and pointed this fact out. But more and more people continued to post the inaccurate details — and then it spread to Facebook, and the whole thing started all over again, with both sides getting increasingly frustrated with one another.

I know it’s a seemingly silly little thing to get riled about, but like I say, consider the potential implications if the “fact” that started spreading was something that could actually put someone in danger, or ruin a person’s reputation. When the entire social Web starts acting like Daily Mail reporters by just blindly reposting things without even bothering to see if they’re true or not, we have the potential for a real mess. Just look at the reactions of Facebook-bound idiots who don’t know what The Onion is for a preview of what might be.

Fact-checking isn’t just for journalists. Of course, there are plenty of journalists out there who seem to think it doesn’t apply to them, either, but that’s another matter entirely. It takes a matter of seconds to check something like a Tweet is the genuine article. You should be immediately skeptical of anything posted as a screen grab of a bit of plain text that looks like it was written in WordPad, or anything described by someone as SO AWESOME/FUNNY/HILARIOUS/LMAOOOOOOO etc. And, most importantly, if something sounds like it was too awesome to be true, it probably was.

Respect to Mr Colm Quinn for his excellent admonishment of Piers Morgan’s twattish behaviour. Disrespect to all of you out there (you know who you are) who fall for this crap every time, whether it’s “OMG TODAY WAS THE DAY MARTY MCFLY WENT TO IN BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II!” (for the last time, it is October 21, 2015) or “OMG! PIERS MORGAN GOT BURRRRRRRRNED BY BRADLEY WIGGINS”.

Simple routine: before you retweet or share something, stop, check, then check again. It’s not that hard.

#oneaday Day 729: Stop SOPA, Read Books

So apparently a bunch of the Internet has blacked itself out in protest against the insanity that is SOPA. It’s a move that I fully support and endorse, as SOPA is a piece of crap that, while (arguably) well-intentioned, is completely impractical with the digital world we take for granted today.

That’s all I’m going to say on the politics of the matter for the moment, since there are plenty of other commentators out there who can doubtless discuss it in much greater detail than me. As a Brit, too, I’m not someone who will be directly affected by the law, but as we all know by now, the proposed measures will have a knock-on effect that could throw the whole online world out of balance.

What I wanted to talk about was how Wikipedia’s blackout has affected the stupid people of the world. Not sure what I’m talking about? Give @herpderpedia a follow on Twitter and you’ll quickly see what the problem is.

Wikipedia is an excellent and useful resource, of that there can be no doubt. But the level to which people have come to rely on it is perhaps a little worrying. To some people, it’s almost as if Wikipedia is the only source of information. (People who think this are probably the same people who believe that Facebook is “the Internet”)

There are, however, many more sources of information in the world than Wikipedia. Many more sources of information in the world than the Internet, for that matter. (Engage Old Fart mode) When I was at school, we had no Internet. Imagine that, you teenage morons! No Internet! If I got a bit of homework to “research” something, then I had to pick up an actual book and look through it. I had to know my alphabet well enough to look stuff up, and I had to know how to spell the thing I was looking up. Dark times? Not really, it was the norm; we accepted it. When the Internet came along, it was a source of information in addition to the knowledge we had in books, not a replacement. When I presented that homework to the class, it was written in my own words, showing my understanding. It wasn’t a printout from Wikipedia.

And yes, when I worked as a teacher, on more than one occasion (more than ten, in fact) I received homework from students who thought that I wouldn’t recognise a printout from Wikipedia. It showed absolutely no understanding on their part besides the most basic of net-savviest — an important skill in today’s society, for sure, but not what I was looking for with the assignments in question.

Technology breaks. Open forms of media are unreliable. Every so often someone will come along and want to censor things. I’m not saying books are immune to these issues, but at least you can still read them when the power goes off.

SOPA sucks. Fortunately, it looks like it might not get through — though we’re still a long way off victory at this time. Instead of bitching about not being able to cheat at your homework, try opening one of those dusty old books on your shelf and looking up the thing you want to know more about.

Magic, isn’t it? Knowledge without electricity. Who would have thought it?

#oneaday, Day 323: A Little Balance On The Gaming Issue, Please

An hour ago, the BBC aired an episode of Panorama, our go-to investigative journalism programme, on the subject of video games. The subject, predictably, was the ever-present “are video games addictive?” question that has been raised and not answered many, many times prior to now.

The programme made a few fair points that are more common sense than anything else. Firstly, those with addictive personalities are prone to becoming addicted to games. Many games have in-built reward mechanics which those who get easily addicted to things will… well, get addicted to. Social games like Farmville, MMOs like World of Warcraft and popular multiplayer titles like Call of Duty all take great pains to ensure a regular stream of rewards and gratification being sent in the player’s general direction. Whether it’s a “medal”, a “completed quest” or simple experience points, there’s a constant flow of something that leads the player to believe they’re achieving something. Those who become addicted to things easily can use that as a justification.

Secondly, the programme pointed out that parental controls need to be used more effectively. Many children and teenagers are given free reign on their use of video games and as such don’t limit themselves on how much to play, to the exclusion of other things. Parents need to get better-informed about the facilities available to them to control their children’s playing habits. This is, sadly, something that many parents are very resistant to, despite the fact that the tools are there for use, particularly on the Xbox, which offers some of the most robust family controls that there are—as does the Mac, oddly enough.

There were no concrete conclusions drawn, however. The “conclusion”, if you can call it that, was that more research was needed from an independent body.

The thing is, this discussion has been going on for decades now, and no-one has thought to actually do that research in an appropriately investigative and non-biased manner.

I was reading through a few Formspring answers from Leigh Alexander (I think) the other day and she made the very good point that those of us out there who write about games can’t be called “journalists” in the same sense as those who write for, say, national newspapers on breaking stories. Our role as members of the games press involves reporting on carefully-disseminated information provided by PR companies, critiquing products on general release (occasionally before general release) and sometimes interviewing a developer from the industry. There’s no real “investigation” there, there’s no hard-hitting stuff. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but given that mainstream media tends to come down on the more negative side of the fence when investigating gaming, I think there’s certainly scope for a counter-argument: someone who does know the industry well investigating the burning issues. And investigating them thoroughly using established journalistic, sociological research techniques.

Who’s going to be the first person to step up and do that, though? More to the point, would anyone read it or take it seriously? Gamers, by their very nature, are defensive creatures, having been made out to be “the bad guys” by the mainstream media once too often. And those not “in the know” are often inclined to have their minds made up by sensationalist stories in the aforementioned mainstream media.

What we need is balance. What we need is a hero.

Wait, what?