Social Media Experiment 2

I reported last week I was going to conduct a social media experiment. The reason for the experiment was to see if it was possible, with irrefutable facts, to cause social media posters to admit they were wrong or if they would ever correct their erroneous statements.

Locally, the social media of choice is of course Facebook but one of the newer community sites is Nextdoor message board. It's a kin to the old TOPIX site from years ago. Basically, people can go on there and say just about anything they want with absolutely no evidence or proof to back up their statements and if not confronted, will continue to grow their stories.

In Loudon County, there are about three people who use Nextdoor to push a political agenda with wild allegations with no evidence or proof of their statements. This is where I chose to experiment.

We'll call them Post It 1, Post It 2 and Post it 3.

Post It 1 is the most active. She'll post long rambling statements with accusations of wrong doing by county officials. But when you call her out for being so wrong, she'll keep changing the topic or take down a particular post and when all else fails and she can't back up or defend her allegations any longer, she'll just make excuses and shut down any more comments on her post. See below.

Dear Reader: I am closing comments to this discussion as the harassment, name calling, and insults from my Loudon County Commissioner Van Shaver 5th District continued until after midnight last night. By now you have read enough information that you can form your own opinion about this article. All information mentioned can be found on the loudoncountytn.gov website under commission documents. Thank you for your time.

Post It 2 and 3 are kind of alike. They make accusations and misstatements with absolutely no facts or proof. Then when called out, they just go dark. They'll never come back and admit they were wrong or make any corrections.

In conclusion, there is no way to win any argument on social media and no need to try. Folks that have no compulsion for the truth are never going to admit they're wrong. If you dare to try correcting them, you then become the bad guy and are accused of harassment. So goes the old saying, it's impossible to tell someone anything that already knows anything. 

Thus ends my social media experiment.

BACK
10/16/23