Just The Facts

When I was growing up, if you read a fact somewhere you just believed it. It didn't matter if it was on the placemat of a greasy roadside diner - if someone took the time to print that fact out than it must be accurate. Now the exact opposite is true. If a book is more than two years old we assume that the facts inside may have been true at the time, but what are the odds they have remained the same? And of course nothing you read on the internet should be believed, because people can put anything they want on the internet and nothing is fact-checked. Even supposed "news" organizations can just make things up. It is all about getting people to click onto your site and has become decreasingly important whether or not the thing which brought them there is true or not. But while a healthy dose of skepticism is good, I do start to wonder if I have begun to lean a little too far the other way because now I'm starting to doubt facts which are too boring to have been made up by someone as a prank. It is one thing to question how tall an actor really is compared to what their IMDB page says, it is another to have the urge to have at least two sources before you confirm the distance between a couple of planets. Pretty sure that second one hasn't changed for a few million years.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I was reading a story about the Los Angeles auto show, where several carmakers unveiled the latest developments. But the biggest story may have been that they have finally come up with a better formula for auto paint. You see, up until now car paint was too quick to fade and give inconsistent shine depending on whether it was parked in the sun or not. Making sure bright colors will stay that bright is too labor-intensive and time-consuming to be worth it. This inability to have consistent coverage is why mass-produced cars have such a limited range of colors. This new chemically-superior paint would allow manufacturers to go all over the color spectrum without fear of the car looking like a mess after a couple of years and will add a little more flair to the road. Since I like my cars to have a little character I found this story interesting. But, what caught my eye was the line which stated that because of that lack of color options 80% of cars on the road today are some shade of the following 5 colors: black, white, beige, grey and silver. Immediately, I started to doubt that number. Now, I had no reason to question this, because why would I? If you were going to make something up about the LA Auto Show you'd say they had invented a flying car because that would get some clicks. Yet, I thought that number was way too high. Surely, I thought to myself, there were a ton of red and blue cars out there to make the actual number of black, white, beige grey and silver cars much lower. So, I started to keep a mental tab as I was driving around and, sure enough, most of the cars I ran into fell into those five colors.

[Sidebar: What jogged this story in my memory banks was an article I saw this morning about an airfield on Long Island where they are keeping all the cars damaged by SuperStorm Sandy. The insurance company is renting out this space while they figure out to do with the cars, but in the meantime it makes for a lot of dramatic pictures. [Sidebar-within-a-Sidebar: The insurance company is trying to decide which cars should be scrapped and which can be saved. The saved cars will be put up for auction. I don't care how great a deal I could get, you would have to pay me to buy one of those cars. I don't know much about cars, but even I know two things which do not mix are cars and saltwater. Hell, I don't even look at cars which were owned by people who lived on the Cape because I think there is too much salt in the air. Now you want me to buy a car which has been under seawater? Thanks, I'll pass. Buyer beware on that one.] Still, there is no denying there are a lot of cars to look over at one time and there don't seem to be many bright cars in the mix. But what is even weirder is that now that I am aware of this fact is is the only thing I notice when I am looking at large groups of cars. It was like how I never noticed Honda Pilots on the road until my parents bought one and now it seems like I see one every time I turn the corner.]

Needing to see everything with my own eyes before I believe it is going to make going through life quite a pain. Also, I really don't want to turn into a conspiracy theorist who sits in the corner and rambles on about the lies in mainstream media, because no one likes that guy. Unfortunately, it appears to be necessary because it doesn't seem like people are in any kind of hurry to correct all the misinformation that is on the internet. (Ask yourself this: how many people are still passing around the "Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya" mass email?) Making the job of fact-checking the web even harder is the reality that f you are seeking internet fame it is almost better to write something people immediately know is an exaggeration versus something which is a slight fudge of the truth. If you are off by a few digits people will chalk it up to a mistake, but if you make up a fact which is beyond insane people may not believe it but they will pass it around to their friends and family - almost as if the internet finds insanity amusing. (I tell you, the world wide web is a strange place.) I guess this wouldn't bother me so much if I wasn't aware that there are people out there who still believe everything they read to be true. Maybe instead of trying to explain to those people why some things they read online may not be accurate it would be easier to show them just how easy it is to change things like Wikipedia. At least that way they can see you don't have to actually know what you are talking about to make it appear official. They may go back to only believing things they read on placemats but if the internet keeps going the way it has we'll all be there before too long.