176. Bubble Trouble.


Well, by now most of you know the drill. Information has changed and we are all a bit screwed because of it. Our choices change our news in ways that have never happened before. The news are bottled up and served as a product to people. You are drinking Coke and your neighbor is drinking Mr. Pibb; a bizarre, dubious and objectively wrong choice.

I know I can't claim to be right, I mostly jest. I am extremely biased when it comes to immigration, women's choice and LGBQT rights. I will favor those over stock market increases and regulation reductions, even though I am an avid stock market investor. I click on articles that show how immigrants are less prone to commit crimes, while my neighbor may click on articles talking about the hive of scum and villainy that files up to ask for asylum. Just like rashes, the amount of biased news you get grows the more you pick them.

If you still are not clear how this works, there's an accessible documentary on Netflix: The Social Dilemma. It doesn't bring any new information but it makes it a bit more palatable for large swaths of the audience. It's scary stuff. We can’t allow *truth* to get sequestered by tech organizations the same way we let *beauty* get sequestered by the fashion industry. 

There ARE truths. They exist. They matter. It's on your politician's voting records, tweet history and executive orders. Trump's truths point to a xenophobia that this country has not seen in generations. It's a fact that he cancelled DACA, started a family separation policy, enacted a Muslim ban that was not correlated to where the terrorists were coming from, and tried to stop foreign students to come. Whatever else you may like about him has to be weighed down with these facts. I listed my top 10 of these on my "I've had it' comic. It was hard to pare it down to 10.

These next few weeks are going to be tough. Even if we lose to disinformation and ignorance, I have hope. Most of my friends are getting more political than they've ever been (myself included.)  We are shunning misinformation campaigns and focusing on people who can argue. There's a good chance that Trump will win reelection, but there's zero chance that I will stop caring for the truth.

Extra Panel: 

Perhaps I'm talking about something else? (PS5 RULEZ)








Comments

  1. webinoakJanuary 12, 2021 at 5:06 PM

    Sales of misinformation indicates market growth. How can one find "truth" in a free market economy where free speech is valued? I don't see a win here. We lose absolute freedom of the press or we lose all means of assessing "truth."

    ReplyDelete

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