"You hear a little everything everyday, but sometimes y'all don' believe what people say" - Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. - "Put That on Something", from the album "Doomsday"
I'm fed up with bullshit. Everyday at work, I have to listen to yet another incredulous story from the (alleged) grand master of paintball. Whether it's the fact that he's got a new paintball gun because he's the best in the world (even though he's too lazy to even walk to the canteen at lunch time), or the fact that he could drink ten pints of Courvoisier (it's not that strong apparently), there's always some new ballshit story for me to say "really?" at every day. This wouldn't be so bad, but then I come home from work and I'm assaulted once again by the bullshit antics of my sister.
Now, not only does she talk utter fucking nonsense, but she makes things so real to herself that she starts to believe it. And then she starts to tell other people all the bullshit. Like the time I laced her drink with paracetamol, or the time I got pissed up on booze and she had to tell me there were 3 hot dutch girls waiting for me at home, or the countless other fucking bullshit stories she tells the world every fucking day.
Even that though, is not the worst of it. Because if I check the news to find out what's going on in the world, I'm confronted with the biggest sack of bullshit in all existence. "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction!" "No! Iraq is a peaceful nation!" "All men are child abusers!" "People from Brighton are more intelligent than people from Dudley!". FUCK OFF!!!
I'm sick of all the bullshit. The only good thing about the news is that in this country there are more than one outlets of information. I can flick through the channels - BBC News 24, ITN, Even CNN if I'm feeling really stupid. Or I can go pick up a copy of The Mirror (the only tabloid worth reading, and even then it's not really that worthy), the Guardian, The independant, whatever, or I can browse the news channels on the internet - Yahoo news (kind of like 'my first current affairs site' http://news.yahoo.com), BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk), or the best, Guerrilla News (http://www.gnn.tv).
Why bother visiting so many differnet websites, viewing so many different channels, reading so many newspapers? Simple. Throughout the mass of crap spewed through all of these outlets, there has to be some common ground, some nuggets of information that actually hold some truth. Ask any historian - they consult as many sources as they can find before deciding what actually happened at the point in time they are currently researching. The more sources you can find, the better (as long as each source is from a relatively different perspective - there's no point getting 30 testimonies from KKK members on the state of Alabama 100 years ago, because they're all going to say the same thing).
So what's the answer? How can we combat this age of half truths and blatant lies? Easy. You're looking at the solution. You cannot censor the internet. If you have information that the public should know about, don't go to the news agencies, stick it on a website. You want to yell something, don't yell through a megaphone, get on the internet and publish it. The internet has the potential to be the mightest repository of knowledge ever created. Together, we could know everything. All we need is to stop talking shit, start writing the truth, and let people know where to look.
And a special thanks to Chad, who was the one who got me writing in the first place. Email him and tell him you love him.
