It's Hip To Be Wrong

At Apparently Bloggers Aren’t Journalists, Coding Horror notes a situation in which a blogger makes an erroneous statement, which is then repeated by two other bloggers.

The real problem is that this erroneous information was echoed by blogger B, and then echoed again by blogger C. At no point did anyone stop to actually verify the claims of blogger A, even in the most rudimentary, basic of ways. All they had to do was download the SDK and look for themselves to confirm that his complaints were true. I’m talking five minutes, maximum. But they didn’t.

Instead, they blindly parroted blogger A, assumed that all of his claims were valid, and perpetuated his mistake across the internet.

(Via Coding Horror.)

In the real world, mistakes of this nature have demonstrable consequences. Like, you’d stop trusting A, B, and C to advise you on certain matters. In the Net world, though, without careful preventative measures (not the Net’s forte), Google’s esteem for all three bloggers will increase, making their input more valuable to parties not aware of their inaccurate or ignorant analysis in the past.

Entrepreneurs and/or search whiz-kids can see $$$ in solving this problem (good luck!), but isn’t it amazing that we live in a world where being flat out wrong can be such a winning strategy? Being a prick has always had its upside, but being wrong?