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It’s a strange way to end a strange year.
About a decade ago I wrote a book about an internet uprising in support of a pair of unlikely criminals who kidnapped a pair of executives after accidentally killing a businessperson during the abduction. In hindsight, it’s a bit eerie given current events.
The book is called This Is Rage. It’s a novel of outlandish observations and counterintuitive character behavior I assembled from a career in technology and media. Much of the underlying ethos had been eating at me in repeated cycles. My goal was to paint in the extreme, to bridge the dying days of old world communication with the uncharted future of a world without filters. It was meant to be outrageous, plausible only at the fringes, a look into events that possibly could happen, but held resonance more as a cautionary tale than a slice of life.
I knew the premise was plausible because I’ve been a student of the commercial internet since it entered our lives. I watched it bring out the worst in people, particularly behind anonymity, but also the ways uncontainable sentiment could be exploited by businesses, politicians, and other special interests. I knew the events could spin out beyond the control of those seeding them, while a clever few would convince themselves they could harness the battered convictions of those who felt forgotten.
I meant it as satire in the spirit of Tom Wolfe. In the years that followed, the line between satire and reality began to blur. Then one day, it seemed to me the line was gone.
Skits on Saturday Night Live and news headlines often became indistinguishable. Something called fake news became identified as unreliable information emerging from unconfirmed sources that took on snowball effects with implied credibility. Just as we got our heads around the notion of fake news, it became an easy label for anything someone didn’t want to believe. Deepfakes, videos that appeared to be evidence of real activity, were revealed to be manipulated images edited for effect without regard for truth. The act of lying was sometimes referred to as alternative facts.
Imagine that, alternative facts as a reality we should consider.
This confluence of powerful, widely distributed technology and internet anarchy has exceeded most of what I imagined, yet the one storyline I hoped was long into the future no longer is. While I anticipated the fiery populism most often expressed with unchecked anonymity, I held the belief that human character would nonetheless gravitate toward a sense of justice. The stretch in my satire was that in fully unrestrained expression, a villain could in the public eye become a hero. This to me was a bridge too far, and that if a movement began to form in that direction, the goodness in us would win out. The failings in our logic would become uncomfortably apparent.
I was wrong. Today the headlines tell us popular sympathy can align behind a villain if the circumstances motivating a crime are deemed by spiraling opinion somehow more pernicious than the crime itself. It was impossible then and it is impossible now for me to believe a vote of internet emotion can take the side of the criminal who murders an insurance executive because he finds the victim’s business unethical. I say it is impossible to believe, and yet it is reality.
How did we get here? As I have written so many times before, the implications of the technology weaving through our lives takes its toll whether we understand it or not. Our ability to digest the psychological impact of technology can’t keep pace with the deployment of its power. We use the internet freely, we express ourselves in whatever form of truth we believe is appropriate, but the ability to decipher how our behavior is being altered eludes us as individuals and in the collective.
There are no alternative facts unless we allow them. Fake news is not a convenience unless we allow it be. Villains are not heroes unless we allow them to be.
There will be more rage, I am assured of that. People are angry, confused, and sadly turned against each other for the gains of those who fuel the rage. While we are free to express ourselves without restraint in anonymity, it’s hard for me to think of that as freedom when we could be empowering each other with shared values and vetted knowledge.
We don’t need to hide behind falsehoods. If we are made to feel afraid for saying the emperor has no clothes, we need to rediscover the courage to stand ahead of the herd. Transparency may prove increasingly challenging in a world gone mad, but actual facts are available if we commit to the work of identifying them. Argue with data and a passion for clarity over impulse.
It is a privilege to write for you, and I believe I have one at least one more book in me. Before I get to that, I am going to have to come to terms with what is meant by satire, and whether being predictive has any value at all. Irony is only a teacher if the comparisons we attempt are rooted in decency that is broadly recognized.
As we begin a new year, remember that there are facts worth unearthing, unsung heroes all around us worth celebrating, and plenty of villains playing out schemes to convince us they are worthy of trust. I’ll finish the year on a thread of optimism and say that together we can separate a worthy example from a fabricated manipulation. The choice to offer applause only when it has been earned remains at our discretion.
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Image: Pixabay