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Can you provide links to back up all your personal experiences? If not, does that mean you didn't have them, that the events in your life did not really happen?
Asking because I have seen people dismissed here for not providing links to back up notations on their personal experiences or opinions. A puzzle. Is everything everyone ever did or considered available on 'the internets' and some of us just got left out? Or are there really people here so gullible as to believe that if they can't google an event from someone's personal history, it could not have actually happened?
Sadly, there are too many people willing to believe anything they read, IF it backs up something they already lean toward. Propaganda would not be such an effective means to an end if that were not the case. The neocon users and abusers knew this when the bought up MSM years ago and began herding public opinion to their desires on a mass scale.
The Internet is just the latest in a long line of mediums some are willing to follow blindly. Spreading propaganda works well on the internet: just make some emotional appeal, provide the magic 'link' to something posted somewhere, email the rubbish and the 'link'. POOF, plenty will believe it to be true, because 'it was on the internet'. Almost daily, there is a post on DU lamenting some RW drivel email going around, and the friends/family who fall for the lies. Being on the internet, having a 'link' is no guarantee something is real.
But what about truth and what is real? If something isn't on the internet, is that proof it never actually transpired? No link, no merit, not real?
Are there holes in internet coverage of YOUR life? If you can't provide links to your every experience, does that mean you are lying about having them? Or did you just imagine all the events which others cannot verify with the click of a 'link'? Without a link to prove memory, are you just hallucinating your whole life? (Now, there's a tangent we might take someday, so long as we have time and wine to see that exercise to conclusion.)
Yes, if someone is making a point, calling it fact, about some issue or event which would have been written about, even somewhat obscurely, it seems rational, even prudent, to question and seek further reference to check validity. When someone states something as fact, I tend to be curious and poke around for more information. But, when someone speaks from personal experience, one can believe it or not, as they choose. One might even consider, just consider, that the other's experience could demonstrate a facet of an issue not previously noted, a possibility missed. But is one really legitimate in insisting it did not happen, without an answer, in blue text on a screen, to the ever-handy, modern dismissal technique of asking: "Link?"
We see it often used here when someone posts their personal opinion. There are some who either can't accept that opinions may just differ from their own (read: the correct) view, or who are just so damned stubborn they won't make the effort to recognize that opinions, like personal histories, are not available for 'proving' online, via the magical "link?". Are there some just so limited in experience that they do not know the difference between someone's opinion, a personal experience, an anecdote, and a verifiable event?
If something wasn't in a newspaper, a lab, on tv, or available by link, it just can't be? A horse with blinders on may think so.
Things happened pre-Gutenberg, outside of controlled lab experiments, far from the camera, and the internet does not see into our own pasts unless we post it ourselves. Science started as observation. Good science still contains observation. The lab is where observations get poked, prodded, tested. The lab is not science, it is a tool of science. The internet is just where some things, real and not real, get recorded. The internet is proof of nothing. Life has gone on for some time before labs and internets. It goes on daily without concern for either of those constructs. Life happens. Not having a link handy does not negate that fact.
Just wondering. "Link?" is a rebuttal? Really?
I have seen it too often, this insistence on "link?", when someone else posts an opinion. I have seen it too often when a question is asked, then answered from someone's personal experience. Seems to happen when some are more interested in scoring points than in learning, growing, benefiting from the collective experiences and perspectives of others. Is the root cause as simple as some being just too limited in perspective, or simply too narrow minded, to consider possibilities beyond their own (unverifiable) experiences/opinions?
Do some really think it wins a debate, asking for an impossible 'link' to a personal opinion, observation, experience? If so, we are never gonna beat the GOP, corporations, wingers and fools. We stand no chance of making positive change if we cannot consider, learn from, or even just acknowledge that our own individual way is not the only highway. Life is not available online via links. Links are just the play button for recordings. Some recordings are real, some contrived. Photoshop happens just as real video happens.
Adopting the method of looking for thin reasons to dismiss something we don't agree with or don't want to acknowledge as even possible by asking for impossible proof is a tactic the Right uses. Insisting on the 'long form' of Obama's birth certificate is not a valid argument against his legitimacy as POTUS. It is just an exercise in chanting 'la la la la' with fingers in ears.
Insisting on links to that which is memory or opinion, especially when one has no intention of accepting anyway, is much the same as the birthers hollering for the long form. There are links to many birth certificates. There are no links to any that will convince all.
Using such methods against someone you have no intention of ever agreeing with does not enrich understanding or perspective. It does not further the effort of meaningful, constructive communication. It most certainly does not serve finding real solutions to the many issues and problems we face as individuals, communities, nations.
Personally, I always figured liberals were more likely to consider the other person may have knowledge, needs, experiences beyond our own scope. Sorta hoped liberals were more likely to expend some energy on learning what others know through first hand exposure, trying to employ empathy for things we have not felt but others have. We are better than la la la I can't hear you because you have no link. But that is just my opinion. I could be wrong. Recent personal experiences would suggest I am wrong.
Sorry, the 'long form' of Obama's birth certificate is not available online. Likewise, 'proof' of the first-hand experiences of others is not always published on some sacrosanct web site, universally accepted by all. Opinions are nebulous things, not news events which are verifiable online. And, no, I have no link to prove my point.
OK, done venting. Thanks to any who made it this far.
:rant:
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