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LIFE LESSONS
How to Tell S#*t from Shinola
Seven simple tips for resisting conspiracy theories
1. Get off Facebook/Meta/X.
Or at least stop reading the news feed. If you can’t bear to cancel your account, at a minimum limit your interactions to people you have met in person (and know they are who they say they are).
They could still be crazy, but at least their influence will not be exponentially amplified by Russian bots or personas designed to manipulate you psychologically by analyzing your personal data (which includes pretty much everything from your entire life history on the internet).
2. Name check every source.
Who wrote it? Who published it? If you can’t name names then whoever put it out there is not credible.
Credible sources (unless you’re Bob Woodward and you’re talking to Deep Throat) do not disguise themselves. They work for credible publications that have fact-checkers on staff who publish regular corrections when they discover they’ve made a mistake.
Look for evidence of credibility — don’t believe what you hear just because somebody you know said it (though that’s a tiny bit better than believing stuff somebody said anonymously).
