if it's not on the internet...

Ever bump into one of those shmucks who won't believe that something is for real unless they read in on the internet?? Ever since grade school my favorite pastime was reading about the biggest this, the fattest that, and the longest freaks of the animal world. way back then, the only resource I could tap for such materials was the school library. I would read all the different publications that I could get my hands on. And there was one particular book that was the ultimate authority, on print, on such subjects: the guinness book of world records. of course, I knew about it's ommissions as well, printing only what people have taken the time to report to them that they have personally verified; but I am already digressing outside my chosen topic. so, while going through it's pages, I learned about pythons, anacondas and some other monstrosities found in the deep recesses of jungles. The capybara, an 80lb. cousin of the rat, is one of the bigger meals of anacondas while pythons, who choose to live mostly at the fringes of human settlements, more often prefer chickens and the occasional dog. With the fast-diminishing rain forest, encounters between snakes and humans in the wild, although not an everyday occurence, still happen. And if it were a single human and a single large snake in the snake's territory, the snake usually will be the winning party. Now fasttrack into the internet age. I received a link sometime ago regarding a picture of a python with a huge bulge in it's body; when it was captured, the python was split open and it revealed a newly ingested human. now, the post had another link to a message board of a european car club in the Philippines, and that was what blew me away. they were arguing on how unbelievable the photographs were, and in such a rabid manner that you knew they weren't rocket scientists! among the arguments they raised was that no snake could open it's mouth big enough to swallow a human, while several very strongly insisted that they already did an internet search on it and COULDN'T FIND ANYTHING, about it; therefore it had to be FALSE. No snake could possibly do that. Nothing on the internet said so. the sad thing about it was that these were the priviledged people speaking. you would really wonder whether these guys: 1) dropped out of school earlier than their older cousins, 2) never read anything other than their eurocar manuals, 3) never understood the concept of critical thinking.

But when i discussed it one time with my fraternity brother from the University of the Philippines, Ron Taccad, he said he had already noticed that it was beginning to be a characteristic of the youth; to refer to the internet as the only credible authority. He summed up the situation like this. "People today will believe something, so long as they read it on the internet. But what is scarier, is that they will NOT believe something if they cannot find it on the internet."

His statement reminded me about something Tony Te said to me about 5 years ago. he said "the sad thing about kids today is that despite having easy access to information, they have no idea about what to do with it." he adds, "today, they have all the knowledge at their fingertips, all the intelligence, BUT NONE OF THE WISDOM."

And that is so so sad.