We have all received them before, or know someone who has. An innocuous WhatsApp message sent a from a well-meaning person espousing some hitherto unknown life changing fact.
Okay, maybe it extends far beyond WhatsApp’s reaches but the Facebook-owned messaging platform seems to be the worst culprit.
But it is only a simple message, what harm could it cause? In itself, not much; but as part of a wider trend, it portends of something more insidious.
The last video I received on WhatsApp was of a guy dressed in a Chelsea jersey trying to prove that drinking water or any liquid with ice is bad for you and will make your insides coagulate like whisked eggs.
He tried to show this by laying out three glasses, one filled with ice cubes, one with lukewarm water and the third with warm water. He then proceeded to add a little oil to each of the three glasses and stir the contents.
The mixture in the ice cube glass forms a thick slurry and the unknown man turns to the camera to explain that is what happens to your stomach when you drink anything with ice.
Let’s leave aside the sheer stupidity of the argument for a bit. The very fact that I received the video shows that someone somewhere believed the man’s claims so much that they thought it worthy to share. That is the scary bit.
That a man with no obvious medical qualifications feels confident enough to offer medical advice and his advice is taken for the truth without any questioning.
And this medical advice has somehow escaped the attention of the millions of qualified doctors and dieticians in the entire world.
It is easy to blame social media for it all. After all without social media, it would be very difficult for the video to get to me.
But in the early days of the Internet, there were such things as chain emails, that passed from email inbox to email inbox containing all sorts of fantastic and unfounded stories, and urged the receiver to pass it on the next nth number of people unless a named deity wouldn’t shower his or her blessings on you.
Those were pretty harmless at first, until they started being used as a Trojan horse in the true sense of the word for viruses and other malware. And it appears history is repeating itself.
We now live in the world where every WhatsApp broadcast message, Facebook post and Twitter link is taken as the very definition of the truth with no space or time for questioning or minimal research.
And if you think it is still all harmless; a couple of years ago during the height of the Ebola crisis in Nigeria, a message went around social media that the surefire cure/vaccine of the scourge was a bath with a salt water solution. As ludicrous as it sounded and still sounds, very many Nigerians indulged in that special bath.
READ: Ebola-inspired film, 93 days set to premiere in a church
Now imagine if the supposed cure was something that was actually injurious to the health of many Nigerians.
It’s not even only a Nigerian thing. Over in the US, the president-elect Donald Trump ran his entire campaign on spurious claims and outright lies. And he got away with it.
It didn’t even matter to his supporters when his lies were exposed; they were already believing the next incredible claim.
There is a common thread that links Trump supporters and people who place their trust in WhatsApp messages; the complete lack of belief in constituted authority, the sheer rejection of facts and evidence and the willingness to believe the worst about everybody and everything.
Don’t be fooled, this is not just restricted to just social media. Everywhere one looks, there is always someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Be it your pastor, your favourite pokiriyan seller assuring you of the efficacy of her wares, or your favourite online relationship expert who somehow has all the keys to a good marriage, irrespective of whether he or she is currently involved in one.
It is not a completely lost battle though. For every half truth and outright lie spouted out there, there are a few media outlets dedicated to exposing the falsehoods for what they are; media outlets like snopes.com and africacheck.org.
And it is the media that holds the best hope for combating the myriad of falsehoods that assail us. The media needs to do a better job of informing and disproving all the shameless misinformations coming from whoever. Standing up for the truth and not just relying on clickbait as a business model.
We can’t leave all the work to the media though. The next time you get that spurious WhatsApp message, you owe it as a duty to explain to that sender that there really is no special knowledge available to just one person, no matter how many times that message has been shared. In the nicest possibly way.
There is a reason we have constituted authorities to dispense public health advice, they have qualified people for that. And no matter how dilapidated a nation’s health system is, it can’t possibly be worse than the unsolicited and unqualified advice of an Internet doctor.
A little fact-checking, a little googling, a little working out on the web and everyone will be the wiser and smarter. And yes, ice will do your insides no harm. I checked and then I asked a doctor.
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