There are so many examples of ridiculous "facts" out there. One of the worst ones (to me) is zodiac signs. I despise the people that blame their personality traits on their zodiac sign. This meme is me...
How can you seriously think that a small paragraph about people born in a span of three weeks applies to you and EVERYONE else that was born at that time?! *insert another face-palm emoji here* That baffles me! That cannot be possible. And where are they getting the info from to compose this shit? "I'm a Leo so I'm naturally in charge, like a lion." Just stop. That doesn't even make sense. And I hate when people always ask what my sign is and they're like "Oh, your a pisces? You like water. You're sensitive and fragile." Um, no. I'm a pisces and I will drop kick you in the rib cage. And obviously I like water, I kind of need it to survive.
Or how about when a post or a meme says "Psychologist have proven..." or "Psychology Says..." and people share it and agree and don't do any research for themselves. They just believe it! First of all, psychology doesn't necessarily prove anything. Even experiments that attempt to seek out causal factors. And of course, correlation does not imply causation, blah blah blah... Second, these types of "facts" never have the scientific article cited. One I saw recently was "Psychology says if you've been friends for over 7 years the friendship will last a life time". What? Where? SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE! I need to see the study, the graphs, the participants, the methods, results. Everything.
Another one of my favorites is when an ad says "You can lose 50 pounds of pure fat in just 6 days with this miracle pill! Just 5 easy payments of $79.99 plus $59.99 shipping and handling, the sacrificial blood of a lamb, and your first born child". Yes, that was a joke and an over exaggeration. But it would not surprise me if people actually started sacrificing lambs to lose weight, they're that gullible and desperate. Hell, give me some evidence and I might actually consider it. That was another joke. But you get the point. There are too many of these examples out there: the fake news, the cover-ups, weather machines, conspiracy theories, flat earth people, it's actually kind of sad. Is reality really that mundane that we literally make up millions of stories to entertain ourselves? Well, duh. What else would people do with their free time?
People love the quick fixes and having information learned for them. If all they have to do is read a sentence or two and it sounds legit, they'll take it. If they can blame their ill-mannered personality traits on the stars rather than a poor upbringing or just plain being a bitch, that works for them. They don't have to admit anything truthful about themselves to anyone, including themselves. If they see a post from CNN they know they can trust the headline and not need to look into the story any further because it's CNN and they never lie. Anything quick, simple, and effortless is the route people would rather take these days.
I will admit that I have almost half-believed some really dumb things I've read, but I usually do some research if it's that important to me and I feel as though I should know if it is the truth. I don't want to relay fake news to others, I don't really want to be responsible for that. People are very quick to believe the click-bait Facebook produces and I don't think it will change anytime soon, unfortunately. But if we could let go of the zodiac nonsense, that would be great.
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