Shouldn’t you believe everything you see posted on social media?

An alien landed near me over the weekend. He came out of his flying saucer and had a friendly conversation with me. Since the Weekly World News isn’t printed anymore, I’ll share this momentous news with you on social media.

See the picture? That’s proof enough for anyone — especially if you want to believe.

Unless you’re a very naive small child or have some serious brain damage, you know that I’m not telling the truth. You know it’s a joke or an April Fool’s gag. Or maybe it’s satire. You know that because you apply critical thinking skills. You ask yourself whether it’s more likely this is true or not.

But even though almost everyone would know this claim isn’t true, it’s also true that many people — maybe most people — uncritically accept equally bogus claims on social media.

It happens every single day. And if the idiotic social media post is making a point that supports whatever you already believe, many people — maybe even you — will eagerly share that nonsensical post.

Even if you have the best of intentions, sharing such nonsense — without reasonable and rational evidence — makes you part of someone else’s monumental lie. And the lies are getting bigger and bigger, to the point that scanning a social media feed is now a bit like reading the headlines on the covers of the dumbest old supermarket tabloids.

Are you doing that?

I’ve mostly been away from Facebook for almost three months, but I had to be on the site Saturday in an effort to fix a technical problem that has been stopping my links from posting. While I was there, I scanned my feed.

I was horrified.

People who I know and care about were posting obvious lies. They were sharing posts that were just as credible as my claim here of having met the alien this weekend. But in every case, the lie happened to match what the friend wanted to believe.

That must be a coincidence, huh?

For some reason, people who become convinced of something share whatever post they believe supports what they believe.

I’m not going to call out specific people or posts, but this runs rampant with political posts. It happens no matter which position people want to promote. They are eager to share idiocy that makes their opponents look bad, even if there is no evidence for what’s being claimed. (People who love Trump do it. People who hate Trump do it, too.)

The same goes for religion and health and all sorts of other things. The more emotional someone is about an issue, the more likely he or she is to do this.

The people who do it seem to think it doesn’t matter, because they’re promoting what they believe is true. But truth doesn’t need to be promoted with a lie — and that’s what many of these people are doing.

So when you engage in this sort of naive idiocy, you’re actually hurting your cause. People who know better than to believe your post are inclined to dismiss the entire position you were trying to promote.

What’s worse, doing this destroys your own credibility.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my new alien friend is about to take me on a ride in his flying saucer. He promised me that we could go abduct a cow or something.

Be sure to share this picture with everyone, because it really and truly happened. No foolin’.

Note: You can find a video version of this article on YouTube. Click here.