Skeptical of the Skeptics

Or in which I jump on the ranting-about-a-general-lack-of-critical-thinking bandwagon.

Is anyone else somewhat skeptical of and/or tired of hearing about the website Snopes?

It used to be that I’d find all sorts of forwarded junk in my inbox that the sender hadn’t bothered to verify. You know, free ipods, the world is ending because of X, whatever. Lately, I find my inbox full of forwarded junk that the sender verified… by looking it up on Snopes and then loudly proclaiming this feat of investigation.

Now, I’m not saying that Snopes is necessarily bad, incorrect, or even invaluable. I can’t personally speak to its reliability because I haven’t bothered to thoroughly research the site or the validity of its investigations. And I probably won’t. And, for the record, I think it’s a cool/interesting website.

But my opinion is this. It’s only one source, folks, and not one with any particular overwhelming authority, at least that I can see. I may be slightly overreacting, but I just get the feeling that email forwarders simply click over to this somewhat random website and allow it to do their thinking for them. Is that disturbing? Never mind if the email makes any sense or even has any importance. Snopes says it’s true! I must tell everyone!

Why?

When I trumpet what I see as the advantages to our information age, I’m often cautioned by those I consider mentors that information is less important than knowledge, and I try to take that to heart. We’re blessed (in my humble opinion) with more information, in more diversely accessible formats, than ever before. So what are we going to do with these amazing resources? Continue to unquestioningly swallow whatever is conveniently delivered to our inboxes, and pointlessly forward it to others without a second thought as to our actual motivations, inexplicably justifying this action by repeatedly siting some random website?

If a cause or issue is important enough to put one’s name behind it and inform one’s friends, acquaintances, and colleagues of it, doesn’t it deserve at least cursory personal fact checking, followed by some semblance of personal analysis or evaluation? I know, I know, that requires actual work. But isn’t ensuring that the causes one stands behind actually reflect one’s values and opinions and are truly representative of the image one wishes to present others worth it? Lacking this process, is that email forward even important, or is merely another announcement to everyone in the address book that we may be communicating in an age of electronic lemmings?