Is Social Media the demise of audio review publications?

Sifting through information is the definition of an educated, informed life, constantly enhancing one’s knowledge and growing as a person. How else does one determine whether information is worthless or otherwise? 

I certainly don’t take someone’s, anyone’s word for something, even the word of so-called experts in their field. As I learned early in my formal educational life, experts have divergent opinions. So, which expert professor, doctor, theologian etc. should one believe and ascribe to?  What is valid?  Better yet, what is invalid?  

Speaking of “worthless” information, the phrase one person’s trash is another’s treasure comes to mind.

As far as personal observations in general and those found in social media, periodicals and contained in so called news publications and broadcasts are concerned, ALL are biased and contain inaccurate and erroneous information. It is sheer folly to think otherwise.

We are all human and come to the table with a shyte-load of preconceived ideas and beliefs. Try as we might, it is a herculean task to be blatantly objective (just ask the double blind experimental proponents). And ask anyone who has been involved with, or been in an event or circumstance that resulted in a news report (print or media) and they will tell you that in the final report, data points were overlooked, missed or down right obfuscated.  An example of this is seen by lining up a handful of people and telling the 1st person a story (unheard by the rest) and then having that person relay it to the next person and the next person to the next etc. Almost immediately, the facts are misconstrued and the story is changed. If a report within 24-hours of an incident can’t be depended upon to accurately represent what occurred, then how can anything else we read or hear be deemed 100% accurate? The proverbial joke about death and taxes speaks to this premise.

Sifting through information posited by friends, found in periodicals and forum posts and discarding the chaff to find the wheat is indeed time consuming.  But it is how I learn and grow.  As it has in life in general, sifting through copious amounts of data points and information has been a great benefit for me and my audio hobby. I’ve found some wonderfully superb components sold directly from their designers that I would have never found. I have changed some of my earlier audio related beliefs and my listening experience has been the better for it. That is exactly why I frequent forums such as this, to learn from others experiences and conclusions. I take in what I find to be important and discard what I find irrelevant. All the while constantly building my belief base or dismantling some of what I previously believed. I find both directions to be equally important, perhaps with the latter being more so, because change and discarding former conclusions and beliefs always seems to be a difficult process.

To wrap this up, my dependence upon periodicals and professional reviewers has significantly diminished with the advent of audio forums. I never believe all that I see (optical illusions speak to that conclusion) and believe even less of what I hear or read. But refraining from viewing, listening or reading (especially divergent information and beliefs), makes Mike an uneducated, dull boy. So, please everyone, keep on positing your experiences, findings and conclusions. And I will let my experiences and knowledge base concur, reject, or learn something I didn’t know and grow in knowledge accordingly.