Memes, tweets, and political TV ads: if you spend any time online or in front of a television, you can’t avoid seeing them.

Even if you don’t spend any time online, there’s a good chance someone will send them to you anyway.

I have had a love-hate relationship with memes for years. They can often be humorous. But all too often they can also be misleading or flat-out lies.

Tweets can do the same thing, only with words instead of pictures.

Both memes and tweets can be used to replace critical thinking.

This morning I woke up to a ton of memes regarding the renaming of Lake Ontario and our unnecessary, stupid, and childish trade war with Canada.

I’ll admit I found a lot of them to be funny, until the critical thinking kicked in.

One that really stuck with me was that some Canadian had redesigned the American flag. In the left corner was the sea of blue and the 50 stars. But the red and white stripes were now shaped to look like a circus tent.

At first, I thought it was funny until the critical thinking kicked in and it hit me that Canadians and the rest of the world are starting to see America as some kind of joke. A circus instead of a powerful, respected leader. Then it made me kind of sad.

A friend who makes it a point to defend everything President Trump does sent me a copy of a tweet this morning in a group chat. The tweet reverted to the old whataboutism arguments regarding Obama renaming Mt. McKinley to Denali and Biden taking the names of Confederate Generals off military bases and how nobody was outraged about that.

I’m sure my friend didn’t give that tweet a second thought, because if he had, he would have realized that renaming those things had nothing to do with a trade war with an ally. Obama and Biden didn’t rename those things as a childish, petty, insignificant retaliation for not getting their way in a trade war. My friend also would have remembered that there was outrage from the right about renaming those things and that President Trump renamed them back as soon as he returned to office.

I know that memes and tweets aren’t going away. I also know that they are just modern-day versions of political cartoons and flyers posted on street corners.

But I also know that too many people take them at face value. They react to the emotion without digging a little deeper to see if that emotion is valid.

The same can be true about the political ads you see on TV. They are used to generate an emotional response. Either to love their candidate or hate the other. How many voters make their decisions based on TV ads, tweets, and memes and not on cold, hard facts?

I have my real estate license, and I know that when someone buys a house, it’s an emotional experience. A potential buyer will know within the first five minutes of walking through the door if that house is right for them or not.

But they don’t make their final decision based on that short-term visual emotional experience.

After that initial adrenaline high of falling in love with the kitchen, yard, or neighborhood, they start to do their research. I work with them to see if the price makes sense and how long the house has been on the market. We make sure they have the house inspected. They check on taxes and schools before signing the papers.

I wish more voters did the same due diligence when it comes to deciding who they’re going to vote for. Do they make their decisions based on the emotions that memes, tweets, or TV ads generate? Do they make their decisions on the down-ballot races based on their neighbor’s yard signs?

Or do they use those messages as a starting point to do more research before casting their vote?

Just because we can’t avoid memes, tweets, and TV ads doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy them. But we need to take a deeper look into what’s really behind them. Are they accurate? Is there more to the story? What are they trying to accomplish?

After doing the research, we all won’t come to the same conclusion, but at least we’ll be able to defend our positions because the conclusions will be more thought-out than a meme, tweet, or TV ad.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

Opinions expressed by columnists in The Daily Record are not necessarily those of its management or staff, and do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. Any errors or omissions should be called to our attention so that they may be corrected. Contact us at news@omahadailyrecord.com.