Monday, January 10, 2011

What does Wikipedia think it means for one to "be"?

Ever look at someone's Wikipedia page or something where it says "So and So (born XXXX) is the lead singer of _____, author of A Popular Book, and is engaged to Sexy Hot Actress." and think man is that all a person who is famous enough to be on Wikipedia is, in terms of like existential being and all??? Like when asked "Who are you? what is the thing that literally defines your being and existence???" they'd be all "oh yeah I'm an actor who was in that movie yup that is me," which, it seems to totally bypass the fact that they're human beings who are worth so much more than the sum of their worthy accomplishments. It seems very troubling, like it encourages you to think of famous people as Famous People who just do their Big Roles and nothing more.

Perhaps it's just this relatively more general idea of misimagining people/not thinking of people as complex beings, but that aside, I think it's this problem that websites like Wikipedia and Sparknotes and the like inadvertently feed: that they and the internet and information/knowledge in general can try to tell you how to think and what to think about stuff. As if they suddenly decide it's an okay idea to assert the view that people are objectively merely the sum of their acts and accomplishments, and that books have clear and obvious themes and meanings and that you can decide what's important in history and what's not worth telling people....

And it's all very stupid and biased. Perhaps it's simple and easy, but it's just kind of primitive and not a sustainable way of thinking and informing, sorry it needs work. And no I'm not adopting some kind of paranoid skeptic conspiracy about big websites trying to manipulate people's thoughts or something silly like that. It's just that people's thoughts and opinions and stuff tend to get somewhat affected in the process anyway, through poor presentation and all. Sparknotes, for example, invites you to accept their summaries and analyses as accurate and objective information that will help you, when in fact in the process of summarizing and analyzing it is actually telling you hey this is what I think is important. Which does not at all help you get the point of whatever you're using Sparknotes for, especially when you're using it as a primary source (which is dumb anyway). But this is how people tend to act by default with this massive plethora of information to soak in.

Maybe all we can do for now is just be critical in absorbing "objective'" information and just try to get a wide variety of credible information the old fashioned way, and kind of take websites like Wikipedia and Sparknotes with a grain of salt, because they're not that bad.

Didn't proofread this all that well, so I hope it kind of makes sense and that I'm not insane. Sidenote: Today is Alaska Young Memorial Day, so let's try not to misimagine manic pixie dream girls as merely their Wikipedia accomplishments but remember in the entirety of their complex and suffering beings.

1 comments:

Manar said...

It's a real problem, of course. But websites like Wikipedia and Sparknotes exist to distill information down to a less complex level. If people wanted to learn it on their own, they would. I mean, I think we can all agree that the vast majority of the people who use Sparknotes are just either too lazy or busy to read books they're supposed to read for class, and they just want to know enough to pass. As for wikipedia, it's nothing more than a fact sheet for the (extremely) casual researcher.

These websites are the thin layer of ice coating the pool of information that exists out there. But breaking through that ice and finding the water is difficult, and separating the water from the random pollutants is even harder. Looking at the surface of things is easy, and people like taking the easy way out.

But, you know, thankfully, there are some people out there who are willing to dive all of the way in. :)

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