To Believe Or Not To Believe

     "Believe nothing you hear, only half of what you see and everything you feel". According to Encyclopedia .com this quotation is from the mid 19th century and warns against over-reliance on one's own experience.
     I have heard some form of this quote all of my life and sometimes the true meaning came home to roost the hard way. Mostly it was a matter of  "old timers" trying to pull the wool over my eyes while playing a joke or just flat out spinning a yarn laced with truth and vivid embellishments. Either way it was all done with no intended harm and everyone usually got a good laugh out of it. Once you had the wool pulled over your eyes often enough you got to where you could distinguish truth from fiction and though you didn't believe all that you heard you could rely on the honesty of your eyes and feelings. This held true for centuries until the rise of the "internet", since then all hell has broken loose.
     The internet has opened up all kinds of avenues for deceit, deception and out right lying. Even if you are smart enough to determine fact from fiction there are thousands, if not millions, of people who will believe anything they see in print or hear with there own ears. These people think the internet is gospel and everything therein has come down from the mountain engraved in stone. Unfortunately there are people who for whatever reason seem to get a thrill out of spreading rumors, lies and innuendos. They do this for monetary gain, for political power, they do it to mislead, to sway opinion and to slander and yes they do it for the thrill.
     The other day I ran across an internet posting claiming some political figure made a statement that was not only offensive but showed their ignorance on the subject. Because this person has recently been a sore on the backside of the political arena, the posting sounded very much like something they would say and I bought into it hook, line and sinker.  Irritated, I made a comment on the posting only to have someone point out to me the posting was a fake. Why someone would want to mislead the public and malign a political figure is beyond me especially since this political figure seems to be doing enough of that all by themselves. Who created this posting may never be known because the internet seems to welcome anonymity.
     With the internet truth and fiction are one and the same. Pictures can be revised "photo shopped" so skillfully one would believe unicorns actually exist, even recorded statements can sound authentic to the ear. The days of old timers jokingly trying to pull your leg or make a story seem more interesting are long gone, you can't trust that your eyes to see what you think you see or your ears to always hear the truth. I know that from now on I will probably adhere to the old saying "If it sounds (or looks) too good to be true, it probably isn't".
     Abraham Lincoln is quoted to say "you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but you can not fool all of the people all of the time". In his day he was right, the internet has changed all that, it has changed the world we live in for the good and unfortunately for the worse.