Day 16: I Stand Corrected

Well. I got duped.

It turns out that the whole George Zimmerman reality show rumor was just that. A rumor. I spent half of the day yesterday fielding text messages, Facebook posts and Tweets from people who were smart enough to realize that the reality show was not exactly reality and were eager to let me in on the news.

Which made me think...

A long time ago, I read what I thought was a rather peculiar article. It was about your basic internet bloggers, people who blogged daily and were eager to jump on any story they could to make deadline. The author of this article (who, ironically enough was a pretty famous blogger himself) referred to bloggers as 'parasites' who attached themselves to a story, no matter how sordid, deplorable, or just plain fake and ran with it in a manner that suggested that most bloggers lack both common sense and discretion. At the time, I shook my head and thought to myself that the article was an unfair generalization, that most bloggers were writing for the sake of writing. With my two blogs a month, if I was lucky, I certainly didn't see myself as one of these bloggers.

And then I started writing every day and experienced first-hand how easy this stereotype was to slip into. It doesn't help when you're writing (or trying to write) about something that you are passionate about or have strong feelings for or against. It turns out that emotion and fact checking don't always go hand-in-hand. It's easy to believe what you want to believe. Not to mention, the obvious fact that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet, even if it comes from someone like me, so is mistaken on a daily basis for Gisele Bundchen.*

(*No one has ever mistaken me for Gisele Bundchen and they probably never will, even if they are blind, deaf, and have absolutely no idea who Gisele Bundchen is.)

 My point is, the world is overflowing with information, too much information, from too many sources and sometimes it's impossible to tell what's right and what's wrong. What's funny is, this whole time all of the people who agreed with the Zimmerman verdict have been telling me that I can't take the information the media leaks at face value, and no one really knows that happened that night because it has all been too muddled, like one giant game of telephone. People told me over and over that I can't believe everything that I read. And no, the irony does not escape me.

So, I was wrong. I believed what I was given and slacked on checking up on the facts (unless you count 'checking up' as reading half of a headline and assuming that it confirmed what I was talking about. Yes, I did that too, sadly enough). To be honest, I feel like an idiot. I don't like being taken for a fool, like the person who reads an Onion headline like 'Hilary Clinton gave birth to a unicorn?!" and not only believes it, but becomes a Unicorn Rights activist because I have absolutely no sense of reality. That's how I feel right now and frankly, I don't like it. The only thing that makes me feel better is that I think that the reason so many of us (yes, I thankfully wasn't alone in thinking this was true) was two-fold: First, tension is running high and people are much more likely to take a joke seriously. Personally, as much as I love a good joke, I think it was too early. That kind of trickery should be reserved for tricking your kids into thinking that cleaning their bedrooms is fun or yogurt-coated raisins are candy. Ways that won't really hurt anyone in the long run. Second, the reality show factor. Because truly, the only thing I don't retract from yesterday's blog is my belief that reality television has taken over our lives. There's a new show every week, about any pseudo-celebrity or mode of survival (seriously, what's with all the survival shows??), so it's really not a far-off concept that Zimmerman, a celebrity in his own messed up right, would get one too. I guess I should be giving whoever started that rumor a virtual pat on the back for making up such a believable story, but I'm just sad that such a crazy story could gather so much merit. And I'm still pretty pissed that I believed it. As foolish as it may sound, I feel like my credibility with all of the ten people who read this blog (I love each and every one of you from the bottom of my soul, by the way) has been compromised and I don't like that. Not one little bit.

But I know that in the end, it doesn't really matter. Everyone is wrong sometimes, even if you really, really don't like to be. Check your facts, get your sources straight, then write something. Got it. Lesson learned.