Nowadays, when you have a question, what do you do? You Google it. You get on your phone or your computer or your tablet or whatever device you have handy, and you ask Google a question, and it gives you an answer within seconds. However, a lot of people fail to realize that all these answers on the Internet are put there by people just like you and me. Some people are brilliant, possessing a wealth of knowledge, some are simply smart and provide useful insights, while others can be jackasses with opinions that have little to no value. There are even those who seem to have the IQ of six, leaving you scratching your head at the responses. You just never know what you’re going to get when you search for information. When I grew up, we had dictionaries and encyclopedias. If you had a question about grass, for example, you looked it up in the encyclopedia, and it would tell you all about grass, with credible information and well-researched details. Nowadays, the landscape has drastically changed; you type “grass” on the Internet, you Google it, and suddenly you’re bombarded with 50,000 answers, but more than half of them are off-topic or vastly different from what you’re actually looking for. My favorite comedian, Chris Porter, said it perfectly, highlighting the confusion and frustration that can arise from the overwhelming amount of information available online. It seems, in this sea of knowledge at our fingertips, discerning fact from fiction has become more challenging than ever.

“Google is not an answer engine. It’s a search engine. It doesn’t tell you when you’re being a dumbass. It just connects you with 80,000 other dumbasses.” – Chris Porter