Cracked.com
The Cracked article is rather old, but it deals with something that's been bothering me. Lately I've noticed, when I tell people I'm a skeptical person, they automatically assume I believe every goddamn conspiracy theory under the sun. Because apparently, being "skeptical" means never trusting the government or mass media and holding infallible proof that the world is ran by a consortium of Jews and Lizardmen.
No, being skeptical means I take nothing at face-value and research it for myself before deciding on its validity. When I was a kid, I remember hearing other kids say, "granddaddy-long-legs are the most poisonous spiders, but their mouths are too small to bite anyone." I also remember thinking these kids were idiots. The problem though is, I'm now an adult and I still hear it. These kids grew up, thinking this random tidbit was truth and never bother to question the fact that it never appears on any list of poisonous spiders or the idea of "having a mouth to small to bite a person". What does that even mean? Have you ever come across something so big, you couldn't bite it? Biting the floor is pretty difficult, but that's more an issue of it being too flat than too big.
Getting to my main point, on three recent occasions when people have caught onto the idea that I don't believe everything I hear, they start babbling on about 9/11 being an inside job. Because logically to them, since I question everything, I must question the events of 9/11. The problem is that then they assume I believe such asinine things as "there were bombs in the WTC", "a cruise missile hit the Pentagon", "it was an insurance scam", etc. But I don't believe any of these things because they're all fucking ludicrous.
This people like to say they're "skeptical" because they don't trust the government or the media, but in reality they're just exchanging one form of gullibility for another. They decide, everything the government says is a lie, so everything this nutcase is spewing out must be true. It's confirmation bias, they because the nutcase because he confirms what they want to believe, that the government is evil. No matter how bad his arguments are or how easy they are to refute, they are accepted as undeniable fact.
This creates the next problem, they don't bother doing research for themselves, or if they do, they only use sources approved by the aforementioned nutcase. They simply believe there's no reason to look at the other side because this guy wouldn't lie to them like "the media". Of course, they shouldn't believe any opposing arguments if they found them because they've already accepted as fact they everything else is a lie.
Iif someone ever does get through to them and shows them the validity of an opposing view, one of two things happens. One, they shrug their shoulders and move on to the next theory. There are dozens of 9/11 conspiracies, dispelling one does nothing to break the overarching idea that the government was involved in some ridiculous manner or another. Two, they create an even bigger and grander conspiracy theory to cover up the bad ones. "Of course the Bush administration were able to implement the greatest conspiracy in history and then fail at everything else because that's what was supposed to happen". I find it a bit easier believe that they were just incompetent, but if government were incompetent, that would mean that every conspiracy theory is wrong, so they don't agree with my logic.
When information is so readily available as it is today, it shouldn't be hard to be informed. If you don't know something, or if someone tells you something that sounds a bit dubious, go online and look it up. And don't stop with one Wikipedia article, find other articles and get a full picture, it's not hard. Hearing something a lot doesn't mean it's true either as the "granddaddy-long-legs" urban legend demonstrates.
I say I'm skeptical, but it doesn't mean I distrust everything and think everyone is lying. Believe or not, but the mass media usually tells the truth. In fact, most major news providers are pretty good sources of information. Unless you really believe Lizardmen run the world, if the same story shows up in independent newspapers across the country, then most likely it's true. News media is also a very competitive industry. So if one paper prints an article with dubious information, you can bet every other paper in town is on the street to prove them wrong and make them look like idiots.
Sources for conspiracy theories are far less reliable. If they're ever proved wrong, it's not because they're incompetent and actually wrong, it's because everyone else is lying and out to get them. Sometimes a false story gets media attention, but have you ever noticed what happens when it's discovered it's false? People get fired. This doesn't happen to conspiracy theorists. If you tell someone that reads the New York Times that it once printed false information, they'd probably say, "everyone makes mistakes." If you tell someone that reads 9-11exposed.com that it once printed false information, you can expect to get an earful. It's not a matter of, people that use mass media are used to being lied to so they just accept it, it's that conspiracy theorists are so devoted to what they believe that they simply won't accept anything else. This is not being skeptical, this is unquestioning devotion and conformity to an idea. It's like a religion for them, something most conspiracy theorists will tell you to be skeptical of.
So in the end, what should I be more skeptical of, mass media or conspiracy theories? I say, conspiracy theories, but no one else seems to agree with me.