Everyone is a Media Outlet

A previous discussion in my Social Media course gave me something to ponder: everyone is a media outlet. We have so much these days; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. We are all capable of sharing information and creating content. This brought me back around to a State Farm commercial I've been seeing a lot lately.

"They can't put anything on the internet that isn't true"....what a kick! But why do people want to fill the web with false information? False information serves no purpose and often backfires. Lately, a lot of incidents have been occurring in my hometown, like a teen dying at the high school or a gunman at the air force base. Since I'm not living there, the first thing I see about these things has been on social media sites. Turns out, much of what people initially post is false. Yes, something did happen; no, to all of the extra fluff and opinion-rumors. What inspires people to post statuses and tweets or blogs about issues they have little knowledge of? Has social media taken us so far off path that we HAVE to include our opinion, even if it is an uneducated one? Why do we expect companies to be completely transparent and truthful online, but endorse our peers when they post illegitimate information? One day, our peers (who are posting poor information) will be the ones behind the social media lines of these companies (who are expected to post truthful information). This poses the question: how long will we really be able to trust even the most reliable sources on the web?