My last post drew some interesting comments and interesting suggestions. However, one stood above all the others in terms of being critical. She wrote in her email, “How do you know which one to believe?” If you remember, I discussed how a writer uses the Internet to research all kinds of things. Let me use the topics I used in that post. Some searches like the Nitro Express are about rifles that were used in the early 20th century. It’s easy to tell what is factual and what is opinion. Some topics, such as how to put on a bra, are mostly a matter of opinion. However, women with a handicap might need special instructions.
The real problem comes when researching, and you are presented with many results. Your task is to sort opinion from fact. I used the phrase, “How can you tell someone has an interest in you, romantically?” If you remember, a search using that phrase yields over a billion results. You get a different number of results if you’re searching from a male or female perspective. Common sense will help you in your sorting. If a search result says, “They will compliment you on your clothing.” Your common sense will tell you that they like what you’re wearing and not necessarily you personally. If a result says, “They will hold your gaze longer than necessary,” your common sense is likely to tell you they have some level of interest in you. It will take more than just one thing to determine if they are interested in you – keep searching and look for similar ideas. It’s sort of like letting the results of your search vote amongst themselves.
Sometimes a fact comes up that changes your whole viewpoint on a topic. We were recently going to purchase a major appliance for the kitchen. We did the usual product reviews and looked at ratings and were about to decide when we found out something. In the article, we found it said, “among the brand names companies in the US, many are made by a single manufacturer.” The ratings showed these brand names had some unfavorable ratings. It dramatically changed our searching. The lesson here is to be open to finding something you hadn’t considered.
