Things People Say: Rumors In An Age Of Unreason By Elizabeth Kolbert

The Internet is widely used around the world, originally acting as a source to find information quickly online, but nowadays it has developed so much that people also use it as a way to communicate with others, as well as sharing opinions on blogs and other social media. In the article titled “The Things People Say: Rumors in an Age of Unreason”, published in the New Yorker (November 2009), staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert discusses how individuals only believe what agrees with their views, and argues that people are the source of rumors and misinformation, especially online. Kolbert supports this claim by first introducing the video of a birther speaking out against President Barack Obama’s birth certificate as an example, describing the skepticism

She uses this as an example to constantly refer to in able to begin developing her argument about how some information on the Internet can be misleading. She expresses her frustration on the stubbornness of the birthers and the ignorance of those who really believe that Obama was not born in the United States by stating, “That such a wacky idea should be so persistent is, to put it mildly, disquieting. Here we are, quadrillions of bytes deep into the Information Age. And yet information, it seems, has never mattered less” (120). By describing the birther movement as “wacky” and “disquieting”, it is clear that Kolbert is against their views and finds it disturbing that they believe so strongly about it. She emphasizes how much the Internet has developed throughout the years to the point that people are able to search up anything they want to, and yet it is as if the facts they receive do not matter anymore since they continue to believe rumors. The Internet has also developed to the extent that individuals are also able to post and share their own opinions online, and she is irritated that most people nowadays would take those opinions as facts just because they agree with their views, even if it is false, therefore leading to the start of rumors. Kolbert’s own views are made clear in the beginning of her article when she described the birther movement with a frustrated tone, and she hopes to evoke the same frustrated feeling in her primary audience in able to start convincing them to agree with