III.04.2019 - Social Media & Why Facts Still Matter
In 1839, the world’s first “selfie” was taken by an amateur chemist and photographer named, Robert Cornelius. We could likely put a pin in that event as the beginning of technology merging with self-promotion. About 50 years later, the telephone replaced the telegraph as the preferred method for connecting one location to another but Alexander Graham Bell’s invention didn’t take pictures so people had to use their imagination about what the person on the other end of the line looked like. That worked phenomenally well for the porn industry. No need to go there. In 1973, the first mobile call was made by Martin Cooper from the Motorola company and he couldn’t resist calling his rival, Dr. Joel Engel, at Bell Labs. Throwing shade is not a new thing. More importantly, that call marked the point when technology enabled person to person contact as opposed to place to place. That’s when communication really started to get very personal.
Social media was an evolutionary adaptation that built upon the DNA of the mobile phone. It started with the 
first websites in the early 90s using Netscape and Mosaic browsers. But our fascination with transmitting to the world what we ate for breakfast or cute cat pics became weaponized in the mid-2000s with smartphones and their apps. Sure, let’s give the Kim Kardashians and her family a solid nod of acknowledgement for making reality fake. That was also when corporate leadership was forced to adapt to a world where everyone had an opinion about everything. Not necessarily an informed or fact-based opinion but that didn’t seem to matter to people who were trying to get the world to take a nanosecond and look their way. It could be argued that Donald Trump wouldn’t be President (at the time of writing) if it wasn’t for social media —Russia, corruption and his annoying character flaws aside.
I’m upset over the recent epidemic level breakout of measles in the Northwest United States. The measles virus was thought to be eradicated because of inoculations. Getting to the point of my blog (and pushing Trump aside for now), I am seriously dismayed by how self-appointed anti-vaccination, autism experts like Jenny McCarthy can spread lies and misinformation through social media that put the most vulnerable people in our communities at risk. Why do otherwise reasonable people actually believe her? Did they fail the internet? Supposedly real doctors promoted Camel cigarettes in the 50s on TV but we figured out that scam when the scientific evidence concluded that countless people died from inhaling poison. Why would anyone buy into Jenny’s pseudo-science when the facts about autism can be found here and in so many other reliable places so easily? Perhaps it is because she was once married to Jim Carrey who is one of the sharpest minds on the planet but, still, Jim is not an expert on autism and he is not an anti-vaxxer. In her autobiography, Jenny admitted that she heard voices in her head and she figured that it was God punishing her for her lifestyle. It’s a shame that she has to punish the rest of society, too. And BTW, God doesn’t care.