Alolan_Apples
“Assorted” Collector
A long time ago, I would believe anything that’s said in the news or in a magazine. Now it’s hard for me to believe anything the news says. In fact, there’s a lot of trustworthy stuff that aren’t so trustworthy anymore.
Yes, many things have lost their legitimacy. Lies aren’t the only thing that’s clouded the information. Biases have taken over too. When many sources take one thing as a fact and the others take the opposite as a fact, and get many people supporting each, it’s really hard to tell which one is true. Even videos aren’t as believable because people took the advantage of splicing. Statistics aren’t as trustworthy either because people can adjust control groups in favor for them. Case in point, the theory of Global Warming involves changing data to stay consistent to what they’re reporting. They also said that the Arctic will have ice-free summers in two years from now, but you’ll have to wait a very long time for that to happen. Dictionaries aren’t objective anymore since you can make words mean what you want to mean (like I can define “candy” as “pastries that contain chocolate”). Same for encyclopedias. My suggestion, trust whatever you can trust.
Here’s a list of four things I felt have lost their legitimacy over the years:
Yes, many things have lost their legitimacy. Lies aren’t the only thing that’s clouded the information. Biases have taken over too. When many sources take one thing as a fact and the others take the opposite as a fact, and get many people supporting each, it’s really hard to tell which one is true. Even videos aren’t as believable because people took the advantage of splicing. Statistics aren’t as trustworthy either because people can adjust control groups in favor for them. Case in point, the theory of Global Warming involves changing data to stay consistent to what they’re reporting. They also said that the Arctic will have ice-free summers in two years from now, but you’ll have to wait a very long time for that to happen. Dictionaries aren’t objective anymore since you can make words mean what you want to mean (like I can define “candy” as “pastries that contain chocolate”). Same for encyclopedias. My suggestion, trust whatever you can trust.
Here’s a list of four things I felt have lost their legitimacy over the years:
- Accolades - for stuff like Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, Tonys, and Game of the Year, they can’t be trusted as much anymore. The Oscars, I felt have lost their legitimacy back when Annie Hall was picked as “Best Picture” instead of Star Wars (now Episode IV: A New Hope). But that was only the first nail in the coffin. It really began to get worse when they changed their rules to prevent motion capture films from being nominated for “Best Picture”. This stopped popular films from even getting “Best Picture”. I would also like to add that there’s some sort of bias in that category. Foreign films hardly get it, animated films hardly get it, horror films hardly get it, and in these days, popular films never get it. The Razzies are even less legitimate since they are meant to be “hate awards”. In addition, anybody can vote on worst film in each category, as the Razzies founder did poorly in film school. Honestly, it doesn’t matter anymore if your work of art gets an award or title. If people actually like your art, that what matters more.
- Ratings/Reviews - although they still have their aura, it’s kinda faded out. For stuff like Rotten Tomatoes and IGN, ratings still make sense, but for stuff like GameSpot, I wouldn’t trust them. First, just because critics like something doesn’t mean everybody would. Just because they hate something doesn’t mean everybody would either. There are actually comparisons on Rotten Tomatoes where some highly popular movies have really rotten scores, as some of the certified fresh films are hated by many. Just like awards, it doesn’t matter if professionals like your art or not. If it’s popular, that’s the matter. But what makes criticism even less legit now is that some people are weaponizing it. I remember back when I used to play Little Big Planet a lot, people used the boo rating as a tool of hate, which got Media Molecule to remove the feature. Today, it happened in real life. After Masterpiece Cake Shop won the Supreme Court case in a 7-2 ruling, its Yelp ratings started to crash. The reason, it’s because they don’t make cakes for LGBT people due to their religious beliefs. The Red Hen, its Yelp ratings went to trash after what happened to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In fact, it targeted every Red Hen restaurant, not just the one in Lexington. Yelp even closed the page for cleanup.
- Polls - they are hard to trust now because they hardly reflect the values of everyone. You may pull a random sample, but the samples hardly reflect the actual population. A good example was the 2016 Election predictions. It was said that Hillary will win, as the Democrats will take back both the House and Senate. It didn’t even change. But when Election Day came, they were proven wrong, as Trump won the election, and the Republicans won both the House and Senate. Polls never have been too accurate either, but the fact that they have bias in them because of which people are voting shows that they aren’t legit anymore. Even in elections, they aren’t as legit, since only voter turnout, not popularity, would determine the winner.
- News - you wouldn’t be surprised to see this here. Fake news is nothing new. It’s been out for a while. But even the most trustworthy news outlets aren’t as trustworthy anymore. That’s because they distort stories to make it appeal to whoever reads from them more. Some stories you hear on the news are completely true, but sometimes they say it in different ways. Some stories are based on true events, but they lie about the real story. Others are flat out lies. Regardless, everything was written just to make money. And lies are only to convince people to agree with them or to get more viewers.
