how can anyone in the hobby be able to determine the difference between good information and misinformation?
Do your own research. Don't ask ChatGPT or trust random memes. Get your information from, and verify info you found with reputable sources. A reputable source could be message boards like this, certain reddit subs, the employees at your LFS and the list goes on. It can also include websites. The trick is to use your head and verify what you're reading. If a random image pops up on a social media page that says something that doesn't quite seem right and might do some harm, like "Did you know you can clean the inside of your skimmer body with toothpaste", maybe ask someone first. OTOH, a post to a message board from someone with hundres or thousands of posts that says "Did you know you can clean the inside of your skimmer body with a toothbrush", I'd be more inclined to beleive it. And, honestly, if someone 'trusted' on this site said to clean it toothpaste (just an example, don't do that), I'd do it...after checking other websites to see if other people do it.
Do folks just choose the information that falls in line with their beliefs and experience or is better to follow the information given by popular names in the hobby?
Those are two different questions. Do folks just choose the information that famms in line with their beleifs?" yes, yes, yes. Confirmation Bias and Anchoring are very real. Even when you know it's happening, it's hard to break away from it.
The other question was 'is it better to follow the information given by popular names in the hobby?'. That a bit tougher but I'll say, in general, very very general, yes. But also no. "Big names" on, say, a message board, aren't always right. Big Names as in large businesses within the industry (cough
BRS cough) are usually 'right', but they're also trying to sell you something and that's worth keeping in mind. I haven't watched the
BRS videos in years, but if you watch the older vs the later ones, you can see the shift happen as
BRS gets bigger and the videos go from two guys talking about their favorite hobby to, for lack of a better way to describe it, a bunch of people posting infomercials for stuff they sell. The info isn't wrong, but the scope changes from 'lets talk about this skimmers/pumps/some other equipment' to 'lets talk about this specific brand and why it's better than other brands'.
I’ve seen what I believe to be good advice being ignored and parroted information being passed around as an absolute true
That's common across all kinds of hobbies and a lot of it comes back to Confirmation Bias (what I already think must be correct) and/or Anchoring (the first thing I heard is correct). I think this also happens in hobbies like this where a lot of people aren't parroting bad information on purpose, they're doing it becuase they're too excited about a new hobby to realize what they're doing. For example, you're looking to get into this hobby and start absorbing as much info as you can. You're on reddit one day and someone asks how to clean their skimmer body and, without realize it's wrong, you tell them to use toothpaste.
TL;DR, slow down, pay attention to what you read and if something seems wrong, ask around. But none of this is unique to this, or any other, hobby.
made me think of Caddyshack.
