Salt in Wound

There’s been some hullabaloo this week, because the U.S. Postal Service issued a Maya Angelou stamp with a big quote that ISN’T HERS. There was Oprah, and the First Lady, and everybody’s on stage in front of this giant blow-up of this big stupid mistake and it’s hugely embarrassing. And the Postal Service found out about the error but, you know, they went ahead with it anyway because, why? They already printed the poster? They already shipped out the stamps to the post offices? If you had to ship them out again I think the postage would be free because YOU’RE THE POST OFFICE!!!

The thing is, this is just a very high-profile example of something that happens EVERY GODDAMN DAY, totally unchecked: People are using incorrect quotes from the Internet, because the Internet is a stupid, stupid, stupid place.

GOOD INTERNET, BAD INTERNET

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s also a wonderful, enriching resource. The Internet as we know it has existed for a big chunk of my life and it has made the retrieval of information a significantly easier task. When I was a schoolboy we had to walk 10 miles to the library and look in encyclopedias and Facts on File and use microfilm and microfiche in these big machines that rattled and hummed and we photocopied pages from books that weren’t in circulation. At the time it all didn’t really seem like a pain, but now it’s SO MUCH EASIER because you can get most of the information while sitting at home not wearing pants.

But, people need to remember that there is more than one Internet, and I am not referring to the Deep Web. There’s the “official” stuff: Your dot-govs, sites affiliated with accredited universities, well-established media sources, a corporation’s own website when you need information from that corporation, etc., … and then there’s EVERYTHING ELSE.

Now, maybe you’re saying, “But Jack, the Postal Service is kind of part of the government, right? And what about Rolling Stone retracting that story, and newspapers and networks are always making corrections….”

Yes, yes, that’s a whole other megillah, totally important, and I think it has something to do with understaffed staffs and underpaid low-level employees who simply aren’t doing due diligence. That’s an enormous problem and it’s getting worse all the time because the world craves content but seemingly doesn’t value it anymore. Maybe the pendulum will swing back, or perhaps the pendulum has been scrapped and sold for parts.

QUOTE UNQUOTE

For right now, let’s just focus on the quotes. This isn’t brand-new; misquoting—and pointing out misquotes—are longstanding, beloved traditions. (“Did you know Dorothy doesn’t actually say ‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore’?” etc. etc.)

But the Internet has made the first part—the misquoting—so much easier, so much more widespread, that the second part, the pointing-out—unlike TV’s Parker Lewis—has no chance of winning.

There are these crappy websites, I’ll single out brainyquote.com but it feels like there are millions of them, that are repositories for countless quotations but don’t do any fact-checking whatsoever. And when someone wants an “inspirational” quote — or something that “really makes you think” — to share on their Facebook feed, or on a STAMP THEY’RE DESIGNING, they Google the person’s name and the word “quotes.” These sites pop up, and people trust that the quotes are true, because… it’s on the Internet. But ANYBODY can start a website. Hell, I did!

So the quote gets shared before any additional research is done, and as a result, the world gets just a little dumber. If the person cuts-and-pastes the quote under a photo of the individual, it sometimes becomes a meme, and spreads stupidity even further, as it gets shared, and re-shared, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on….

This has been happening since the early days of the interweb (“I’m going to forward you this e-mail of Steven Wright jokes, they’re hilarious!”), but social media has made it so very much worse.

ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT VIRAL MISQUOTES

So what can we do? Well, when you want to use a quote, spend just a little extra time to make sure it’s legit. Can you find it in a primary source? (You remember those, from when they taught us about research in school.) A book where the person actually wrote the words, or a video or transcript in which the words were actually spoken. If you can’t find a primary source, a trusted secondary source is usually OK. But not always: Remember our earlier discussion of the “official” media making more and more mistakes. Or when an error gets printed in a hastily-written biography or nonfiction book, it gets repeated ad infinitum online. So be especially careful.

And when you see a quote online that looks a little hinky, look it up and point it out. Yeah, I’m that jerk who’s always been sharing snopes.com debunking links; I even got my dear old mom to do it. Try not to make the other person feel stupid, or make yourself look like a know-it-all. We’re all making these errors; ain’t none of us innocent. (When pointing out mistakes, I often use the construction “I got tricked by this before, but it turns out…”) So let’s all try to help each other, and stamp out incorrect quotations. And you can quote me on that.