Hurricane Nora has come and gone, but if you have even the slightest awareness about what’s going on in Vallarta, you know by now that she left devastation in her wake. The storm itself didn’t do a ton of damage here in town, but the inland rain caused the Rio Cuale to swell to the point of overflowing, taking out bridges, homes, roads, and lives. There is a huge area of Centro/Old Town that is still covered in thick mud and inaccessible. The main way friends from far away can help is by donating to the Vallarta Food Bank, who are rocking relief efforts, and the PV SPCA, whose facility has been completely destroyed.
https://vallartafoodbank.com/donate-1
But I’m not here to talk about that. I want to talk about misinformation.
Facebook is useful, fine, I admit it. In a town where there is a very large senior population and a large blue-collar population with a relatively basic education who may not always own computers, the average level of internet-savvy skews a bit low. Facebook (I used to call it the 2nd coming of AOL) is perfect, in that it offers an online experience that keeps it simple, and can be accessed completely by smartphone.
Unfortunately, that lack of internet literacy is also what makes Facebook a breeding ground and endless propagator of misinformation.
Sometimes it’s just annoying. I can’t tell you how many pictures of cute animals or beautiful landscapes show up in my timeline with some caption about the BEAUTY OF NATURE or OUR PLANET IS A GIFT FROM GOD or whatever. Anyone who takes a second to look at those can tell they are fake, photoshopped, or even toys, not real animals. There was one needle-felted horse (MAJESTIC CREATURE!) in particular that was shared so often that I started to believe it was a joke I was not in on. And fine, enjoy your picture of a toy sloth and think it’s real. It doesn’t hurt anyone, it just makes you look silly.
It’s when misinformation is actually harmful that I get mad. Everyone shares an image of a missing kid without checking the date, or taking 7 seconds to google it to see if she’s still missing. Often that kid was found years ago and is no longer living. Imagine being her parent, living with that incredible loss, and having that image repeatedly appearing in your feed because of Facebook yahoos who don’t think to check before they click.
On a more recent note, the amount of nonsense flying around Facebook about the effects of Nora has been infuriating. A little boy went missing when his apartment building collapsed, and his mother was posting his picture in all the groups. Someone misread an unrelated update and went off half-cocked posting widely that he had been found alive. Because it was on one of the bigger groups (Side note: the local FB groups here are WILD. Do not rely on them for ANYTHING IMPORTANT), it was repeated dozens of times, in dozens of places, and it just wasn’t true. They eventually did find him, buried in the rubble of the building, and tragically he did not survive. I’m still seeing his mother’s original post being shared by well-meaning but ultimately harmful Facebook users.
Please, take a second to confirm before you click “share.”
Another tragedy of the storm was when a young woman was dragged into the river in her car. Again, I keep seeing posts claiming FOUND ALIVE, FOUND NOT ALIVE, etc. At the time of this writing, they have only just found her car; her body was not inside and she is still missing. How about we stop torturing her boyfriend and other loved ones by spreading untruths about her? I didn’t know her well, but I did know her, and I am heartbroken by what happened. Every time I see someone claiming she has been found, I imagine her boyfriend (a completely lovely guy who has been organizing river and beach searches for her) seeing it and his heart leaping into his throat.
I know we all want to be the first to know the latest information. I know we all want to feel like we are helping. But please, PLEASE do even the tiniest bit of fact-checking before you keep misinformation going. Even if you delete your post, the bad information lives on out there, spreading faster than a certain virus*. I’m still seeing people claiming the little boy was found alive because they saw it posted and trusted the wrong source.
Sharing without fact-checking does REAL HARM. Our community needs a break from harm right now. Just stop. Help in ways that actually help.
Thanks, gang. I’m going go treat myself to a cookie now, as a reward for not using the phrase “fake news” anywhere in this post.
*I’m not even going to get into COVID and vaccine-related misinformation here. Nothing I say is going to change anyone’s mind at this point, so go ahead and keep eating that horse paste from the farm store.
Good luck with all that, Mr. Ed.