A video comes to light. In it you see me clocking (punching) a woman. What’s the immediate response? Of course it’s that I knocked out the woman for apparently no reason. Here comes the online mob, who will do everything they can to make me look like someone that should be in jail. But is what is seen the actual story or is the video heavily edited to ensure I am the aggressor?
So a friend online posted an article about how to deal with online mobs. As we’ve all witnessed, a tweet, a blog post, or a heavily edited video can, and often does, drive a certain quarter into outrage mode without stopping to think whether or not the person initially making the accusation/allegation is actually presenting the truth, or just what they want the rest of us to believe is the truth. That’s really the morbid side of social media. when one person can destroy another’s reputation simply because they disagree with what was said.
I’ve not commented on the Jussie Smo;;ett incident, just as I didn’t with the Coveninton Catholic School initial initial video: we have to wait for the actual evidence of whether something occurs or not to form any sort of opinion. We should, as skeptics, never rush to judgement on anything presented to us a news because as we all know, sometimes what’s initially reported to us as fact, turns out not to be that way at all. But over the weeks, this has become a story that seems to eat up time on television, as well as other news outlets as the initial story unwinds.
It snowed overnight where I live. This morning we’re still getting a small amount. It hasn’t been a lot, at least not for those of you that live in latitudes where this time of year there are days where you can become snowed in, and if not, it is a pain to have to get to work, or run errands. But where I live, it is unusual. So far, this winter, including this one, we’ve had a total of around 8 inches of snow. Before you start laughing, let me explain.
As a conservative, I follow and am followed by, other conservatives on social media, specifically Twitter. I do also follow some liberals and progressives, but the overwhelming majority I think (I’ve never actually counted) are conservative. I try not to follow those I consider the crazies from either side but sometimes until I see a few tweets from someone, I have no idea of their specific political opinions. It’s wide ranging, again on both sides of the spectrum from the reasonable (who I prefer) to the downright conspiracy theorists. there seem to be a lot more lately of the later than the former.
Conservative Skeptic 