Catchy title? Death is probably too strong, but the Internet has become fairly useless at this point.

While volunteering at the Seymour Center, I heard another docent tell someone that swell shark eggs are made of collagen. She added, We used to say keratin, but recently I learned it was collagen. I had been telling people it was keratin for years, even while noticing many differences between the shark eggs and another keratin-based show-and-tell item, blue whale baleen. While I waited to engage my colleague on this topic, I googled, Are swell shark eggs made of collagen?

The top hit replied in the affirmative. Then I googled, Are swell shark eggs made of keratin? Again the top response, a different site from the previous, answered Yes. Both were science-adjacent sites, and I sent some time deciding the first one was probably accurate. The web is just as confused as the docents were, and had I googled, What are swell shark eggs made of? I would have had perhaps a 50% chance of getting the wrong answer.

During the time, currently ongoing, the media are reporting on the horrible wildfires that hit Maui, I often heard that these were the worst fires in Hawaii in “84 years” or “more than eight decades.” NYT reported that initially as well, then appended a correction which said the value was closer to twelve years, with no additional detail. Since then, I have heard the first two phrases repeated on all sorts of outlets numerous times, the lower value not at all. I tried to research the sources on the web with no luck. Since web content lasts forever, I expect this possibly incorrect figure to appear in every level of scholarship on this topic from published books to grade school reports for at least the next century.

I previously mentioned a friend at work who is a flat earther. Occasionally–rarely–I follow up on something he mentions to me, and I am always amazed by how quickly I am catapulted into the Shady-though-not-quite-Dark Web. If I ask about a conspiracy by name, I often get a hit from a conspiracy site, as opposed to a mainstream report on the phenomenon, despite using my own laptop, presumably well-trained by my preference for refereed sources. Maybe I should be pleased that it allows me to go rogue at will, but I’m not.

I remember when I first saw photoshopped photographs. From that day to this one, I have not believed anything based solely on photographic evidence. Show me a cute cat pic, I will say, Someone probably made that up. Now I can say the same about the Internet.

Going with my gut, which is all I have left, I would assert the climate is telling us climate change is a bad thing, our obesity and disease rates are telling us ultra-processed food is a bad thing, and our lack of basic civility in handling disagreements is telling us social media influencers are bad things, but I certainly can’t prove any of that.