Search Engines and the Dumbing Down of America

A tale of two organizations and their portrayal on search engines and the media

Recently a friend mentioned that some people had concerns about a “3 Percenter” sticker on his vehicle. The concern was essentially that my friend was an extremist, simply because he had this sticker on his vehicle. This concern over the sticker puzzled me. I admit I did not know too much about the 3 Percenters but what I did know, I generally liked. I’ve known a few people who were associated with the group and they all seemed to be pretty upstanding citizens. So, I took it upon myself to find out more about the organization. I started with a quick Google search. The first result page that popped up for me started with a wiki about the 3 Percenters organization. Without even clicking on any particular result I could read that according to Wikipedia, “The Three Percenters, also styled 3 Percenters, 3%ers and III%ers, are an American and Canadian far-right, anti-government militia movement. The group advocates gun ownership rights and resistance to U.S. federal government.” Seemed a bit contrary to what I knew of them. I read a little more. One person even described the 3%ers as the “most dangerous extremist group in Canada.” Well, I could let that one slide, we are grading on a Canadian scale, so…

Next, I thought I’d go right to the source. http://www.thethreepercenters.org. For such a “dangerous” group their home page seemed fairly innocuous. Reading further on their page I found the organization actually published a set of By-laws. I skipped down to Membership and Participation so that I can see just what kind of individual was allowed into this group of anti-government rebel rousers. And I find this for. “Potential members must first fill out a questionnaire and go through a vetting process. Again, there are no membership fees or dues. Membership in this organization is reserved for those who read, understand, and abide by the rules, principles, and views as described in this documented framework. Vetting will be performed by the State Leader, State Assistant Leader, or State Vetting Officer. Participation is not only warranted, but actively encouraged. All willing able-bodied men and women who are of sound mind are invited to participate. Everyone has different skills and backgrounds that can be brought to the table to benefit the group. Children are allowed to participate at family friendly events.”

This can’t be right. I mean, they even had allusion to “family friendly events.” There were also provisions in their by-laws setting criteria for age of members and criminal convictions (guys if you restrict criminals from your organization, you’re never going to get any government-overthrowing done) and more. They even had a process for conducting background checks in order to vet candidates for membership.

It was quite apparent someone had some bad information on the group. Since this article is being written to show how censorship and bias affect people, I would be remiss if I didn’t relay how these same searches for another group that I would dub infamous came out, ANTIFA.

And low and behold the first page of Google results for ANTIFA was quite different looking. Where the page for the 3%ers prominently labeled them as extremists there was no such eye catching entry about ANTIFA. One of the search results that was about middle page was from Merriam-Webster.com. And it showed the following text, “1 : a person or group actively opposing fascism.” Can’t say that opposing fascism was the first thing that came to mind when I thought ANTIFA, but ok. Next was the Wikipedia ANTIFA entry. This is where things got really warm and fuzzy.

Whereas Wikipedia labels the 3%ers as an anti-government militia movement, ANTIFA was titled as an “anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement.” Did you catch that…political movement. Reading further on the ANTIFA Wikipedia entry they do state that “individuals involved in the movement tend to hold anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-state views…” Wonder if it was the “anti-capitalist” or the “anti-state” views that caused ANTIFA to try to burn down a police station with officers trapped inside.

Then for my final challenge, I searched two terms. For this search I used Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The terms were “ANTIFA vandalism” and “3 percenters vandalism.” It was at this point that the absurdness of all of this went off the charts. On the first page of results for 3 percenters vandalism there was nothing about vandalism to be found. Clearly this anti-government militia is slacking. Then on the results page for Antifa vandalism, it was a cornucopia of vandalism exploits. Sorry 3%ers ANTIFA beat’s y’all hands down in the vandalism arena.

OK, so the point of all of this is that people using the internet to do their research can easily be misled. If you don’t bother digging a little deeper than the first page of results the bias of the particular search engine you are using is very prominent. But further than that, this phenomenon is causing the dumbing down of America. I mean c’mon. Who in their right mind is more concerned about the 3%ers than ANTIFA? Its cognitive dissonance. Hell, I’d expect the 3%ers to be the type of group that would come to the aid of trapped officers. And because the liberal left at this point has control of most major media outlets and big-tech, the news and information being put forth is more or less, propaganda.

Finally, as I like to do in all of my works, I want to give the reader a direction to go from here. When you have to get information on something don’t just rely on search engines or the media. Try to find real life people you can talk to who are close to the issue. And use your own life experience to judge what’s going on. And when someone puts forth something that you know is absurd, point it out. Some of this may be surprising. Might even be hard to believe that the benevolent overlords in Big-Tech would seek to misinform us. But, in the words of the great “street informer” Huggy Bear, “I lay it out for y’all to play it out. Until next time, educate yourself, reflect on what you know, and move forward!