People have been asking this same question for well over a century. Perhaps you've heard "if you don't read the New York Times, you're uninformed, and if you do, you're misinformed." I don't know who originally said that, but it's usually attributed to Mark Twain. Personally, I think it's better to be uninformed than misinformed, and I'm not alone in that belief.
Beware of false knowledge, it is far more dangerous than ignorance. - George Bernard Shaw
There's also this meme, courtesy of @lucylin:
On the flip side, there's the absolute shit-take that History is un-American, which the Varyag tore apart.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it's perfectly fair to ask for a source when people make a claim you haven't heard, but yeah, there is a subset of the population that almost fetishizes footnotes.
"Citation needed" is a good thing, but "muh Reliable Source(TM)" is not, it's a variation of cherry-picking. Once a person has made up their mind, only information that feeds confirmation bias is "Reliable(TM)", whereas anything else is "biased and unreliable." Those are the people who fetishise footnotes. They are not worth arguing with unless you are prepared to chase a Gish-gallop, then go woozle hunting, and then have your interlocutor project their deliberate time-wasting onto you. Greg Laxative is a good example of that behaviour.
The subject of vetting sources is WAAAAY too complicated to summarise in a comment, but I'll definitely write about in the future.
Folks who will respond to a clearly articulated argument using fundamental reasoning from an agreed premise and insist on confirmation from an authority instead of using their own brains and readily-verifiable info or common knowledge.
Erm... could you finish that thought? I think you're missing a word or two.
Was describing the worst of people I have encountered who fetishize footnotes and references as a substitute for thinking.
Oh. Makes sense now.
me too! better to be Uninformed..