The disease of refusing to read behind the post

Reading social media comments are a very interesting sociological experiment. This exercise highlights many things but above all, it reveals in the most sun-shining manner who puts full belief in a social media post taking said post as gospel. For the purpose of article, I will call this person an ‘IBA’, which stands for “I BELIEVE ANYTHING.’

For clarity, an IBA is a person who sees a social media post, sees what they want to see, is not interested in seeing if there is a link attached to a post, and above all, refuses to read or research the veracity of the post. The only action that makes an IBA disbelieve the post, is if someone they trust (who usually has their own biases), says the post is incorrect.

An IBA seems to be most vocal in the arena of politics and Jamaica is no different. I have heard that each political party has its own ‘social media army’ standing on alert to pounce upon any social media post that is not favourable to its own party. I have never been acquainted with such an army, so I will assume that the IBAs who do post, do so of their own free will.

To be honest, I would better understand an IBA’s behaviour more if they were an army – after all, it is their job so serve and defend upon order to do so. The fact that an IBA acts of his or her own free will does not bode well for said IBA’s acumen. Now, let me be clear (although the IBA’s will not have read this), I am not calling anyone stupid. I am calling an IBA a person who is dangerously uninformed.

What has made me put pen to paper on this subject? It was an article on this platform in the opinion section that said “If Antony Anderson is PM Holness’ cousin, does it prove problematic for NaRRA?” I read the article (this action is relevant). I did not answer the title question for myself assuming that Antony Anderson is or is not the Prime Minister’s cousin. I read the article to see what it was positing to make my own conclusion – that is called act of free thinking.

The article questioned scuttle, or as we say in Jamaica ‘suss’,  circulating that the Prime Minister and Antony Anderson are related. It did not seek to answer the question posited in the headline. It did what most journalism is supposed to do – question politicians as to veracity of circulated statements. The article was very complimentary of Antony Anderson but called on the Prime Minister to answer the question so that the matter could be put to bed and we could get on with the business of the nation unmarred by ‘suss’.

Now, dare I say the arrogance and unwillingness of politicians on both sides of the political spectrum to answer the public’s questions is a subject for another article I will write. But I will say that politicians are paid by tax payers and are employees of the people. They are not sovereigns who get to decide what should and should not be answered, unless it is a matter of national security.

But for this article, I want to concentrate on the IBAs. It is clear that following the publication of this article on Our Today, the JLP Communications team ‘sprang’ into action posting on its social media account that the referred article is “fake news and political propaganda”. Clearly they too suffer from the disease of being an IBA also because their comment would be calling the very complimentary statements in the article about Antony Anderson fake news and propaganda; but wait, they are clearly IBA’s also so they refuse to read the article. Oh – I get it now. Their capacity for true belief has a maximum word count of 10.

But what I am more surprised about are the number of comments to the JLP’s post. Save for I think two comments, the total comments (of which there were 109 at the time of writing this piece) all in some way called the article a lie, demonstrating that they too are IBAs.

In contrast, one comment remarked “—-, which part fake? This: “Antony Anderson can do a good job here and should be supported to do so. It matters not if he is a distant relative of the Prime Minister. He is a trusted and is a safe pair of hands.”? Who is thinking/reading for you?”  This comment was clearly not written by an IBA. It quoted the article and questioned the IBAs’ statements. I too ask the exact same question.

Now free speech and choice (including the choice not to read) should be respected. But it is time that the IBAs, which includes the JLP’s comms team who I assume handle their social media page, try to improve themselves and realise that being an IBA is not a standard to which they should spire.