And I used to think these Facebook friends had brains

One of the attributes of cyberspace and the brave new digital world is that many people using it, or experiencing it, believe that none of the old rules apply.

That’s why so many internet-based businesses tanked … and why so many of them continue to do so: somehow, those behind them don’t believe they have to obey the same rules of business as do “conventional” companies.

Hence there is a tendency to believe that, on the World Wide Web, you can give away your products for free without losing money; that somehow huge amounts of users on your site will make it all right in the end.

Hand in hand with naivety on the internet goes its cousin, gullibility.

That is the primary reason why fake news thrives in this foetid hothouse of opinion. People seem to suspend their critical faculties, either because what they are seeing is amusing, or shocking or, more worryingly, because it is something they want to hear.

Every few days, it seems to me, there is a post on Facebook or Twitter that has been shared or passed on in breathless excitement by people I used to think were intelligent. Used to? Yes – because, in most cases, they have passed on obvious garbage.

The latest example was, allegedly, a photo of a protest by German motorists, who were incensed when the government increased the price of fuel. They simply parked their cars on a highway – and left them there, according to the post. The problem: it was a pic of a massive traffic jam in China some years ago. That much would have been apparent to anyone who looked closely at the image, which would have forced them to remark, at the minimum, about the large number of Asians in “Germany”.

Another was of the alleged seizure by the Hawks of Italian supercars from a house owned by the Gupta family.

Nobody who passed this on bothered to look closely at the video. Had they done so, they would have wondered why there were no black Africans present. Had the Hawks suddenly become an all-Indian outfit? And why were the road curbstones painted green and red – not exactly common road marking colours in SA? Truth: this was a video of Indian supercar owners (in India!) heading out on a breakfast run.

The fake news is all over the net these days. A couple of days ago, in the wake of the Cuban air crash, people were posting videos of previous air accidents and claiming it was the same crash.

I cannot even defend newspapers when it comes to fake news, because we often pick up stompies from the net, or we get used by sophisticated disinformation spin doctors. Look at the Sars “rogue unit” splashed over the front page of the Sunday Times…

Some years ago, I had a run-in with the same paper about their stories claiming the late health minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, was a drunkard.

There was not one piece of substantiation – a date, a time, an eyewitness account – yet that story was treated as gospel by many, who hated Manto. And, it went on to win a journalism prize.

I have asked in print, a number of times, for the proof on that story. I’m still waiting.

Moral of the story: don’t believe everything you see and hear – no matter where it is. I’d far rather live with, and listen to, cynical, yet aware, people than suckers.