When the virus began its pandemic, my good friend Chris started sending me Facebook posts that explain that so-called link between the 5G network and the spread of the disease.
Other posts claimed that President Trump, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Vladimir Putin are working on behalf of an international conglomerate that had developed the virus. I told him those theories are dangerous and ridiculous. And after I finished speaking truth to power with much passion, he answered, calmly, "But how do you know it's not true?"
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All through the past week, I have been asking myself this question time and time again. On the one hand, I can easily dismiss these theories because they sound far fetched.
But on the other hand, my friends are sending all these serious articles on the disease from the right-wing media outlets and explain to me in detail in each meeting. Everyone has become an epidemiologist, or a virologist, and most of the information that is being relayed to me is full of contradictions: yes to Advil, no to Advil, yes to serological tests, no to serological tests.
The more information I receive the more confused I become. Is Chris right? Of course not. But how do I know that? After all, Chris is no fool: he has a Master's degree and is an open-minded liberal.
I have clung to a nihilistic mood. Humanity is fighting the virus of the century and we are not even able to agree unanimously that it exists. Perhaps it's best to just leave society and finally read War and Peace.
Today everyone knows that we all have access to infinite data through our fingertips. Just grab your cellphone and you can see how big the moon is and how many goals your favorite player had scored. So how come there are still people who think the world is flat?
I wondered: perhaps it is because, in this era of data we are living in, data seems to be neutral. But it is not. Just like everyone else, I too often disseminate non-credible information. "This is a nice article," we tell ourselves. "Maybe it has true data, but if not, that's not too bad." We pass this information like the virus, as a-symptomatic carriers.
Perhaps the reason that this information seems to us so innocent like a Wikipedia page is that the word is derived from "inform." But no, these two words are polar opposites. Being informed is something you acquire from curiosity. It demands activity: searching, analysis, and so forth. It involves being pro-active and relying on the ever-changing relationship between yourself and the world. Myself and the virus, myself and Chris.
