Fake News: Attacking Intelligence And Embracing The Lizard People
One of the most brilliant merchandising concepts over the past 100 years was the addition of impulse buy items to the checkout area. As a kid, I remember staring covetously at the brightly colored and enticing rows of candy bars and flavored gums, my Mom glaring down just daring me to start whining for them. There were soft drinks, chips, Archie comics and for the adults there were magazines and newspapers. Anything to build a bigger basket and squeeze out every nickel of margin they could. The thing was, it was rare for an actual newspaper to be sitting there. It wasn’t USA Today or the New York Times available for purchase. No, what people impulsively bought was the salacious, the scandalous, the secretive.
“How to lose 50 pounds in 5 days!”, “Brad ate Angelina’s goldfish!”, “Bat-boy found living in Louisiana crawlspace!”. These were the headlines that caused millions of hands to reach out and throw a collection of paper onto the conveyor belt. Nobody impulsively wanted to learn about their world. They want to learn about a fantasy world. They wanted to feel like they had insider knowledge that they were only lucky enough to possess because they happened to be in the right place at the right time with a discerning eye. It made them feel better about their own lives, giving some the ability to look down on celebrities and those with the audacity to possess famous names. For others, it gave hope that a low effort answer to their body image prayers could come through at any moment. For a pitiable few, it confirmed their worst suspicions of the world. “The lizard people WERE real and that politician I hate IS one of them!”
Yet despite sales being strong, and consumption remaining steady, the overwhelming majority of humanity viewed things like The National Enquirer and Weekly World News as purely entertainment. Their reporting was not expected to have any merit, as their stories contained less journalistic integrity than the backs of most shampoo bottles. Facts after all, are facts. Surely no rational person would ever seriously believe that Bigfoot robbed a convenience store in Washington. Nobody actually thought the Queen slapped Princess Diana for showing a preference for West Coast rap. Everyone obviously rolled their eyes when a headline said the moon landing was fake and the Earth was flat.
Except they didn’t. There were some that still very much believed those things to be true. Which is all well and good, enjoy your little hobby! Discuss it with your friends as they give you a polite smile, find others that think similarly and feel secure in your echo chamber, stand on a soapbox and scream it to the hordes of people who don’t even register your lunatic opinion as they rush by. What’s the harm? Well, the problem is that we kind of went and invented the most gigantic soapbox in the history of humanity, and named it the Internet. Now those conspiracies and fictionalized narratives were shared with the entire world, and it had become much more difficult to tell fact from fiction. Truth from lies. They both are on nice looking websites. Both are typed correctly, spelled out and formatted in a way that you have come to associate with credible reporting. But unlike when Weekly World News was doing it, there really isn’t any dead giveaway that what you are staring at is fiction.
In the year 2020, we don’t have flying cars or a cure for cancer or nice affordable jet-packs. Instead, we have the most comprehensive framework to influence and manipulate society that has ever existed. Those dangerous and desperate for power have long fought against intelligence as the primary threat to their machinations. People seeking out truth and turning small flames into scorching beacons has led to enormous positive changes in the world time and time again. Journalists who dedicated their lives to investigating and exposing corruption, deceit, lies and subterfuge were lauded, and we would listen and take them seriously. Now there is a significant portion of our society that has been conditioned to view the “Mainstream Media” to be as reputable as those rags at the checkout counter. A Pulitzer Prize is a political favor and the sources listed in their work must be fake, although we can’t possibly be bothered to actually check. This is, of course, simply not true. Even if you are scowling at what I have written up to this point, please pause to consider this point objectively: What is more likely? That there is a global conspiracy of journalists, scholars, historians, scientists, doctors, economists and an entire political party working perfectly in concert to deceive you…or that that is simply a false narrative propagated by those that stand to gain by discrediting them and deceiving you? That shouldn’t be any harder to answer than if the Earth is round or flat.
The same instant gratification that led to Enquirer and Candy Bar sales now firmly guides our consumption of information. When you can re-post a news story with a single click, who cares if it is true or not? You posted 20 just like it yesterday, if two or three are fake what does it really matter? People are now so contrarian and excited to believe anything that reinforces their sense of outrage that truth and lies is no longer a concern for them. People who taught their children not to lie, to know right from wrong and not to believe everything they read now take anything rattled off by their favorite 24/7 News Channel personality as gospel, ignoring the disclaimer that this particular show is categorized as “commentary” for legal reasons. People get upset when given a fact check that lists out sources and evidence for independent review, because surely it is just a website like where they found their fraudulent information! People who think of themselves as honest and informed unwittingly spend significant portions of their days shoveling propaganda designed by the powerful and greedy to harm their own self-interest.
There is nothing wrong with being a questioning person. There is nothing wrong with seeking out truth. There is nothing wrong with being suspicious or slow to trust. There is everything wrong with setting aside your dignity, your sense of morality and your intelligence to satisfy a programmed sense of righteousness. There is everything wrong with embracing lies and slander as an acceptable form of conversation or debate, especially when you know the truth. There is everything wrong with you doing your part to drag civilization backward to appease your own ego and desire to be the special person that could see behind the curtain when no one else could.
Be better. Do better.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go read up on what Bat-boy has been up to in that attic…
