This drives me insane. Most news, I just take with a grain of salt. I mean, I don't have the free time to go research every damn news story I come across- if you tell me a place got bombed, I'll probably believe it (especially if it's news coming from several sources) but I might question the reason behind it. It depends on whether or not I'm interested enough in it to go looking further. But when some stories cones across my path, they just don't ring true. These, it's usually a matter of a simple Google search to find out if it's true or even partly true. Facebook drives me nuts with this. I know too many people who will just repost any old shit, like they're the first to find this 10 year old, already proven untrue pile of crap. It's annoying and sometimes makes me question how they're even still alive.

it's usually a matter of a simple Google search to find out if it's true or even partly true

Google always returns what most people wish to find first, it's how it works. It's too biased to find if something is true, you need also to check the legitimacy of the websites it shows you using secondary sources.

I heard Jackie Chan died today.

Thank you, Jackie Chan, for 100 years of karate.

Abraham Lincoln said that the name of the man that did it was Einstein.

Wait...we dont use only ten percent of our brain?

I'm not convinced that some people don't really just use 10% of their brain. I've met some total morons before. Like, how are they even still alive stupid.

I don't think they critically evaluate it. They just mostly pass it up as being untrue because it's April Fool's Day.

But then weeks later: "I'm sure I read somewhere that....."

I refer to that as the "thrown mud leaves a stain" theory, proven by the successes of Karl Rove and Roger Ailes.

"Wow, America really is headed for a totalitarian state? But I read that on April Fool's!"

April fool's is my most hated 2 weeks of the year.

That means April 1st is also a good day to sneak real news under everyone's nose.

Tech companies have done a prety good job of turning april fools into the day they release actual news.

Gmail was a great example of that. I thought it was a prank until my boosted cap didn't go away for like a week.

Shit...that was way back wasn't it? I've been using gmail since the first invites were being passed out (when each new person had a set number of invites). It was such a big boot on hotmails face. SO much space at the time. You could have had 20 gmail accounts hosting all of your media. Making it into your own cloud. Just amazing.

Maybe not so much. I still saw a lot of people believing what they wanted to believe.

I visited /r/politics yesterday, trust me, it was the same as any other day.

Ironic seeing this post in /r/conspiracy when the only good part about April Fools Day is that is shows people what its like to be and think like a skeptic for the rest of the year.

People don't label everything they disagree with as "mainstream media propaganda" and agree with anything that fits their confirmation bias regardless of its source one day out of the year. People question what they see one day out of the year. Conspiracy theorist, meet skeptic. The skeptic is open minded enough to accept the answers to his questions and set personal bias aside in the name of reason and evidence based findings.

Another stupid post. Almost every top post from r/politics and /r/worldnews is about being skeptical of whats in the article.

Another goddamn post trying to paint /r/conspiracy as being smarter than the rest of the world

http://rbutr.com to help with this.

This seems like an awesome resource. Although it could easily be gamed. Thanks for the link.

The dark lord made it so... Hail Satan!

When I first saw the post yesterday it had > 6,000 points. I checked back a couple hours later and it somehow was at < 6,000.

I check all of them all the time - it usually doesn't take long to analyze

This meme has really resonated with many of my usually noncritical FB friends. Very nice.

Did any of us need to read this again. Why repost stuff from less than 18 hours ago?

I think a lot of people here don't subscribe to trash subs like r/showerthoughts.

You're itching to say the enlightened ones aren't you ;) i know your sorts. I don't know what I'm subbed to. Made the account about a month ago to talk about hearthstone really.

Do you use that as a form of argument against prople though? Kinda weird

You're holding the good Dr accountable for something he didn't say.