I Read it on Wiki....

From Wikipedia: "Wikipedia's 15 million articles (3.2 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site."

Translation: anyone can write/edit for Wiki. In my mind, that means that anyone can make up whatever they want and throw it into Wikipedia as fact. And yet, Wikipedia is toted as the end-all of the online resources. It is used and allowed as legitimate source material for writing a research paper (which, while I think that is a huge detriment to the advance of information in a digital age, I can't really complain because all of the research papers I've written in the last three years were helped along by Wikipedia). I bring this all up because during a conversation about cars last night I was told point blank, "It's true! I read it on Wiki." To me, that sounds an awful lot like "It's true! I saw it on Fox News." Click on that link to read the insanity. Not recommended for conservatives that love the channel, but pretty dang useful to those of us rational people who expect our "news" to be relevant AND true... Okay, the "rational people" comment is probably uncalled for, but seriously? Suing for and winning the right to lie to your viewers and yet people still watch it...? I'm so confused.

At least Wikipedia takes some precautions against full on lies being published. Of course, I'm sure plenty still get through. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia and Fox News fit pretty perfectly into Baudrillard's theory of Simulacra and Simulation. Maybe one day (perhaps not to long from now), the only information we know will have come from Wikipedia, and the absolute truth about reality will be distorted to the point that we don't even suspect that it is.

Then again, "absolute truth" is nothing more than a concept at this point. Information, regardless of source, is never delivered unhindered or unaltered by some sort of bias to the general public. Sometimes the alterations are unintentional, of course, because people can't help but relate things in their own view and with their own words, but sometimes (cough cough the Bush administration) information is altered on purpose to serve certain interest.

This is more or less why I am so cautious about any "fact" on the internet. A new term should be invented to describe this wave of half truths and biased fact, and then everyone should agree to use it so that people can tell the difference!

Anyway. Be skeptical is all I'm saying.

So here's some awesomeness for you.
I heart P!ink, and I particularly like that her ex is in this video with her. You go girl!