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Originally Posted by CSflim
Unless of course, said memes are coupled with a meme imploring you not to reflect upon them too closely.
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True, like... "and you'd better act now, or it'll be too late!" But after a while -- and after being taken a few times -- most people do learn caution through experience. Not everybody, though -- some never learn, as P.T. Barnum knew well.
Memes are not all-powerful. I simply take the point of view that 97 percent of everything I hear from the general society and media is crap or an outright lie. That doesn't mean that I ignore it; it does mean that I evaluate it before investing any belief in it, according to rules like these:
1) Who's telling me this?
2) What's their agenda? What do they have to gain by convincing me of this?
3) If the opposite were true, would I expect these people to tell me? Or would I expect them to only tell me facts that favor their interests?
4) Do a broad cross-section of voices back this claim?
If the answer to 3 and 4 are false, I ignore the idea for the time being. And they usually _are_ false. Google News (used in conjunction with Google) is an excellent way of scanning a broad range of opinions on any issue quickly, and learning about the people who have those opinions. That's a little work -- but frankly, if I don't feel strongly enough to do some research on some matter, then I don't feel strongly enough to really have an opinion on it.