Automatically makes me feel guilty about sharing it even though I did read it first.
But most interesting, for our purposes, is this habit of sharing without clicking — a habit that, when you think about it, explains so much of the oft-demoralizing cesspool that is internet culture. Among the many phenomena we'd tentatively attribute, in large part, to the trend: the rise of sharebait (nee clickbait) and the general BuzzFeedification of traditional media; the internet hoax-industrial complex, which only seems to be growing stronger; and the utter lack of intelligent online discourse around any remotely complicated, controversial topic.
This was, incidentally, the Science Post's inspiration for its recent "lorem ipsum" gag on the subject. The editor of the site, who writes anonymously, told The Washington Post that he had tired of seeing the sheer number of misunderstood, misrepresented or straight-up fictitious bunk that people gleefully signal-boost across the internet. The Science Post is run by professors and doctors, he explained: It pains them to see bad information spread this way.
Which is precisely why clickbaity science headlines are so damaging.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/?utm_term=.010b1f70304a
In my defense, I did read immediately after sharing.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I did share it. It's even better than I thought it would be.
Interesting article... at least, for the 4 out of 10;-D
ReplyDeleteI can proudly say that I never shared an article that I hadn't read - though I rarely share at all anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I can say I'm probably too proud to do it in the future :/