WeakNerve

I'm a millennial. I grew up in a time when questioning what your parents told you was practically a rite of passage. Every house had a dictionary and a thesaurus, and an encyclopedia was never too hard to find. There was a certain pride in proving someone wrong, especially an authority figure. But you had to come prepared. You checked your facts because the last thing you wanted was to confidently enter an argument only to discover you were the one who didn't know what you were talking about. Questioning authority wasn't disrespectful. It was how we learned to think independently. It's also how scientific discoveries have been made, accepted theories challenged, and societies have progressed. So when did we stop questioning? We entered the age of the internet with more information at our fingertips than any generation in human history. We can verify almost anything in seconds, yet somehow we've become increasingly willing to accept whatever someone tells us, provided it agrees with what we already believe. Even when something supports our own opinions, shouldn't we still want to know whether it's true? When did being right become less important than being agreed with? Today, you don't necessarily need facts to win an argument. You need followers. Enough people repeating the same misinformation can create the appearance of credibility, regardless of how easily the original claim can be disproven. And the frightening part is that we're allowing this to happen at a time when facts have enormous consequences. We have billionaires exercising extraordinary influence over American politics and decisions being made in Washington that affect the lives of ordinary people around the world. Over the last four decades, our economies have become so interconnected that American political and economic decisions don't stop at the American border. They affect international markets, businesses, jobs, and the cost of living in countries whose citizens have absolutely no say in those decisions. What was once regarded as one of the most respected and influential countries in the world now has people around the globe questioning the direction it's taking. The American Dream is starting to look more like the American tragedy (corrected by a reader). And what's most disturbing to me isn't even that people are spreading misinformation. That's existed throughout history. It's how many people no longer seem particularly interested in finding out whether what they're repeating is true. We used to take pride in questioning the people who told us what to believe. Now people will defend a complete stranger on the internet more passionately than they'll defend the facts sitting right in front of them. We have never had easier access to the truth. When did we stop looking for the truth? And when did it stop being embarrassing to be so confidently wrong?