A Day in the life of Misinformation

My professor at ASU asked me if I would log a 24-hour media digest. A reflection of a sort on media behavior and detecting potential misleading headlines.

5:30 am: I woke up and checked my email. Nothing there, just a bunch of blah, blah, blah A.K.A “junk mail”. I did run across an old familiar friend while browsing through Twitter aka X. Yes, there was obligatory misleading propaganda spewed out through the bowels of the willing sheep AKA MAGA. When did we become so stupid? Or worse have we always been Stupid?

7:00 am: My wife sends me a text containing a disturbing story she had read on BBC News. I get the feeling that every step we take as a nation has been very wobbly and extremely unfair to our Indigenous and African-American families, but every step today now brings us a stumbling and staggering stride backward. 

9:00 am: There more I try to figure out our new world the more confused I become. Who, what? And most importantly, WHY??? When fact checking the accuracy of this post I found via Grok…still not sure how reliable this one is yet, but the AI confirmed that Trump has spent over a quarter of his 69 days in office golfing, with costs to taxpayers reaching $26 million, aligning with a Guardian report estimating over $23 million for seven golf trips.

11:00 am: Watch MLB.TV to catch archived Dodger and Tiger matchup from the previous day's game. I know, I know…I am an Arizona State Sun Devil and I hold firmly that Cam Skattebo is without a doubt the BEST running back in college football, but I love my Dodgers.

11:30 am: Do some homework with a baseball game in the background. Topic: Research ethics; this class brings me back to the “valley of the shadow of death,” which I call statistics.

5:00 pm: After the study meltdown, I needed a refresher, so I took to Instagram, and who do I see? No words...just look

5:30 pm: Put some Bowie in my ears and deflated with a glass of red wine and a few Instagram clips that make me laugh.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DHrnqqjIv55/

When looking through my media diet throughout the day, I see a pattern of political satire. Most of which are not welcomed because I am not that political anymore. All the nonsense after 2016 and continues today has turned me completely off of politics. News today seems to be misleading and shaped after the fascist, perverted, wanna-be king who sits in OUR SEAT in OUR HOUSE. He’s a joke and will be forever remembered as one, and his sidekick, JD Vancey Boy, too. In reflection, my heart is broken, and I have become saddened by what our country is becoming. It is a sad day when I think of my grand uncle who, at the age of 19, lost his life fighting for our freedom.

I wasn’t surprised to see the amount of misinformation being sent out. It seems to have become the norm since Trump took office in 2016. I would be shocked if I saw that there wasn’t any. I do not use TikTok and rarely use Facebook, so they are irrelevant to my post. However, because of the ease of manipulating all forms of media, I would quickly fact-check anything I see on X. I do not believe that President Trump was running with the apes, nor do I believe Musk was outside resetting the internet because he forgot his password. It makes for a good laugh; God knows we all need one.