Gullibility and Information Exhaustion

Back when many people were sitting around in their underwear surfing online news because they were stuck at home due to Covid lockdowns, I first came across the term "empathy fatigue".

Because many had very little else to do besides try to follow the news as it came along — and that news contained endless stories of people slowly dying and misery and family loss — our sense of empathy for the suffering of others got stretched to the limit.

Well, at least for those in the population who actually possess a heart and soul!

Part of what also happened during those particular times was that we started getting bombarded with so much information that was more designed to attract clicks and views than to actually inform. And so, information overload also became a significant part of our landscape.

Lately, I've been spending a little more time on Facebook than I usually do. This is partly because a couple of friends are pushing their seminars and workshops through Facebook and I'm trying to be supportive, and partly because we have two new grandbabies... and the easiest way to share photos and updates back and has been through Facebook.

Much as I may dislike Facebook, its functionality as a portal to share photos across many time zones and stay up to date with family members in other parts of the country remains a definite plus.

Of course, it also means that I am exposed to other people's posts and pages and what they consider valuabl/interesting.

What I find particularly disturbing — and even more so during the last couple of weeks where the situation in the Middle East has been boiling over — is what seems like a growing aggressive gullibility in many people, in ways that I don't quite understand.

Don't understand, to the point that I ended up in a bit of a round
table discussion with some fellow students of psychology and human nature... in which we were just kind of discussing why people are so seemingly gullible about what they believe, and whether people are really getting more gullible or whether they're just suffering from information overload to the point where they simply don't have the energy and inclination left to spend hours in research to verify whether every story they see and which "sounds good" is actually something true or something created by AI because somebody somewhere is hoping to get a million views and get paid for them.

As I have pointed out before on these pages, the news is no longer simply "the news;" it's not a matter of just hearing what a news story is and taking it at face value... now you see the news story and then you end up having to do 30-45 minutes of research merely to establish whether it is pure fabricated bullshit you're reading, or something that actually happened.

Which is where I keep running into this notion of information exhaustion, and I increasingly believe that it's a real thing because I recognize that I'm starting to feel it, myself.

This post came about a few minutes ago because somebody posted on their Facebook wall a "news story" about the intent of Iran to send suicide bombing drones to California.

Pretty much anybody could make such a claim, and deciding whether to take such a story seriously requires doing a bunch of research into the strike capabilities of that country. It doesn't take a whole lot to figure out that they actually don't have the technology to do what is stated in the article. So basically it is bogus.

But the thing I find disturbing here isn't so much that some person who might not know better is sharing this information but that this kind of information is being taken seriously by people who definitely should know better. That is to say, even people in a position of authority who might make life or death decisions for other people.

Taking the liberty to extrapolate a little bit further... if the people further up the food chain are also suffering from some kind of information exhaustion, aren't we going to end up with a great deal of trouble and perhaps all sitting at the bottom of a big smoking hole because nobody actually has the bandwidth to follow up on facts rather than react to rumors?

I'm not strictly just talking about the problem with AI here, I am talking about the problem with humans; humans who don't have the time or inclination to do their homework and do their own research.

Maybe I have just gotten too old and too skeptical and possibly swung too much to the opposite side... in as much as I pretty much don't believe anything I read or watch anymore, and I research virtually every single word that comes across my sphere of influence, at least any word that I have to use as a basis for taking an action or not.

And yes, I am getting really really tired, because it demands a ridiculous amount of time I really don't have available!

But, tired or not, I'm still not willing to give in to leaving something as total guesswork, while sharing it as "fact" with other people!

Thanks for stopping by, and here's hoping you have a great Sunday!

Comments, feedback and other engagement is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2026.03.15 01:34 PST
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