The day I realized my 'research' was just echo chambers

I used to spend hours cross checking news sites for anything about the moon landings, thinking I was being thorough. Then last Tuesday I joined a thread on a space forum and a guy named Pete pointed out I was only visiting sites that already agreed with me. He showed me his bookmarks, starting with NASA's own technical docs, and it hit me that I never once read the source material. Has anyone else had that moment where you realize you were just collecting opinions instead of actual evidence?

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1 Comment

robert_hayes1mo ago

Pete sounds like the guy who shows up to a potluck with actual food while everyone else brought dip from a jar. I had the same wakeup call about a different topic a few years back, realized my "sources" were basically the same three blogs quoting each other like a game of telephone. Once I actually read the raw data, it felt like finding out the magician was just a guy with a mirror the whole time. Good on you for posting this, and tell Pete he owes the internet a bookmark dump for the rest of us.