Scrolling through social media these days is a chore of abject curiosity. From the random game posts asking for quest items, to the ranting relative talking about an issue from 30 years ago, navigating Facebook, twitter, snapchat, etc. can be quite the daunting task. However, nothing is more frustrating and nonsensical then a random friend from high school or college sighting a source they both haven’t read and haven’t verified its credibility.

Usually these posts involve all caps and quite a few spelling and grammatical errors. Along those same lines, trying to make some sort of point under the guise of some slipshod article from someone’s personal blog or from a non-news source like Buzzfeed, is like building a house on sand. It doesn’t work and makes you look ridiculous.

But there is something else to this, isn’t there? Why is it troublesome to share misguided or non-credible information besides personal irritation? People believe it! They eat it up with a spoon and share the article that they too haven’t considered, allowing some other gullible sport to pick it up after them. Information, or the lack thereof, spreads like wildfire. If bad information can infect our thought processes, then two things tend to develop: group think and frustration.

Groupthink tends to develop in the light of fallacious information because usually, information that is not credible is quite juicy or world altering. Information from bad sources often have engaging titles meant to draw the reader in and click on the link.  Titles like “15 things about (blank) that will blow you away” or “5 things (insert group of people) need to stop doing” capture many peoples’ interest and almost requires a click on the link.

Perhaps this is the intention of the title, so the readers will actually read the story, but more often I believe it is because they can draw you into their website so their advertisers can get some views.

“Groupthink tends to develop in the light of fallacious information because usually, information that is not credible is quite juicy or world altering.”

Those stories are often a series of pictures that you have to individually click through that takes forever as you are trying to get that add for a mobile app to go away. But after one is done angrily clicking and questioning their very existence, this is where the groupthink happens, they are prepared to defend it and join a community of other people who are taking this information as fact.

As I said before, this information is awe-inspiring, and is likely to be fun and a great conversation starter. Why bother questioning legitimacy or credibility when you can try to tell someone that the grass is actually chartreuse? Perhaps this is also partially because it took so long to read through the article and one feels like they need to make that experience worth it, but a large part of it is that critical reading skills are severely lacking.

With this group centered mindset natural frustration, especially for those who oppose the group. For example, let us imagine a scenario in which Person A reposts a shocking article from Buzzfeed over how horrible water is for you. Some more people have followed suit and are buying into this idea that water is indeed bad for you. Person B, however, disagrees and uses an academic journal article to show how water is beneficial. Yet, the group with Person A still disagree and are now talking in unison over how bad water is.

This is frustrating for Person B, as they clearly have the better argument, but are being drowned out by a million wrong voices. Inside the group it can be frustrating because the only group answer is basically that everyone else is wrong even if a few members of the group would argue that everyone else may have a point.

“Information, or the lack thereof, spreads like wildfire. If bad information can infect our thought processes, then two things tend to develop: groupthink and frustration.”

This all happened because we don’t check who is posting and don’t consider if what they said is fundamentally wrong by quick, simple research.

Thus, why are bad articles or poorly read articles hurtful? They can build a movement off a rotten apple, it seems fine but it is rotten at the core. We must be careful about what we are reading and passing along to our friends, for ease of reading on Facebook, but also for the sake of good discord so we don’t have a war between a straw and stone house.