💾 Archived View for brachycera.diptera.casa › gemlog › spread-more-misinformation-online.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:27:48. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-04-26)
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25.03.23
False information online has been spreading like wildfire in recent years, heavily and negatively influencing the world offline just as well as online. People usually do not bother to check if what they read is actually true as long as it sounds good. So why would I say such a thing as "we need more of that"?
What I'm really referring to with this lurid title is not the spreading of misinformation regarding political events, but rather spreading misinformation about yourself online. More importantly the first step: keeping things to yourself online.
While everyone is free to do and say almost anything online, I find it surprising how quickly we've shifted from "don't talk to people on the internet, they are all weirdos and they will try to suck out your body fat" to "I think you should include your sexual orientation in your twitter bio so I can put your tweets into a better context. everyone else is doing it".
As engaging with other people online became easier and faster, we grew to expect people to prioritize their online presence to a fascinating degree. Is it really that important for you to have an unnecessarily aggressive discussion about what kind of cheese is the best for 2h? Don't you have debts to worry about? To quote an overused phrase: go outside and touch some grass. Hear the birds sing and brush a bug from your face.
People love this argument a bit too much and it's pretty hypocritical most of the time (if you followed your own advice you would not feel the need to argue with the person at all) but there's some truth to it. While having pointless beef online is fun, it's easy to overdo it and very easy to lose perspective. Take a step back and regard your social media accounts from the outside. How much of the information on there did you feel excited to share, and how much of it did you reveal only because it was expected of you? This hits young people especially hard. While some older people might have grown up with dramatic warnings about sharing any personal information online, the younger online generation grew up during a time where we were beginning to say "eh. sure I guess you may know my full name and address". This is especially unwise for young people as, and I think most people will agree with me, being a teenager is embarrassing and no one really wants the entire internet to remember how annoying they were at 15.
I think this is all kind of sad. We're missing out on one of the greatest oppurtunities the internet gives us: telling blatant, harmless lies about ourselves. Where are all the astronaut racecar drivers? The people who's entire classroom got up and clapped? I don't think the impersonal anonymity of talking to strangers in your screen has got to mean that we're all dicks to eachother. Where's all the fun gone nowadays?
The web, for all its faults, is a wonderful and diverse place which holds a unique chance for any user: being someone else for a bit. This is true especially for those who can't be themselves offline, due to narrow minded social circles, oppressive governments or whatever other reason. The internet can be like a vacation: no one here knows me so I can behave as weirdly as I like. You can spent introspective time online, try out how it would be to be this or that way - find yourself. This isn't as true for you if everyone knows that you are Steve Lastname from London who has a wife and kids and works at Google.
I hope that the most important parts of this are clear to any reader: set your own boundaries online. If you want to doxx yourself and you know what this means for you then go ahead. But you don't owe anyone a single damn whiff of information about yourself, just as they don't owe you anything in return.
Tell the Archaeopteryx
That I never wanted this
Featherhead metropolis
Liar liar, wings on fire
The most puzzling paradox of them all: if I'm such a big fan of telling untruths on the internet, why do I have a domain with my face and my name and details about my life and the entire package?
This has one reason and one reason only - its short melodic name is "Staatsvertrag zur Modernisierung der Medienordnung in Deutschland, Paragraph 18 Absatz 2": the treaty that makes having a website in Germany a real pain and which is generally a buzz-kill to me personally. This law demands that any person with a website include an imprint, which lists their real name and address, under penalty of death (fees) if they catch you not having one. The clause is anything but specific about who must do this, as it excludes "private" websites without actually saying what is meant by this. Generally legal experts advise everyone to include an Imprint unless all contents of their website are password protected. Due to this uncool, completely unnecessary and utterly outdated approach to the internet (at least where people who are really only trying to run a non-commercial blog are concerned), I had to either go all in or live with the extremely unlikely possibility of being relieved of my of money.
Despite this there are many places online where I am free as a bird to share utterly and transparently untrue facts about myself, though of course I wouldn't tell you where, as this defeats the purpose.