What does it say about your cause, if you have to lie to support it?
I am one of those people who believe that it is never too soon for well-timed, good-intentioned humour, as I think that humour is a solid way to cope in what can be very difficult circumstances. Humour can provide an outlet, as well as a way to reframe a situation so that we can find new perspectives and approaches to deal with whatever tragedy we might be facing at a particular time. But I also think humour has been degraded and simplified, where nuance and cleverness is lost, replaced with bitterness, cruelty and political agenda.
I was looking through some "deepfake" images in a story about the Bondi shooting event from the other day, that had victims positioned with makeup artists to suggest it was staged, and fake AI-generated Facebook profiles of the shooters, claiming they were Jewish. But, these are not in any way done in poor jest, they are done for a political cause. And it got me thinking about the creators of them.
What do they think of themselves?
If in order to support whatever cause they subscribe themselves to they have to lie about events, what does it say about firstly them, and then their cause? For example, the "staged event" narrative has become quite popular over the last few decades, even though the scale of organisation required in order to control all of the images is ludicrous. When everyone has a camera in their hand at all times, it is hard to fake something as large as the Bondi shooting. Yet, there are still many people who will believe that narrative, because they want to believe it.
Of course, the same narrative falls down when there is personal connection to the event in question. For those who want to believe and have no personal insight into the event though, they can suspend their disbelief of the propaganda they consume in order to keep their belief system intact. But for those with some kind of personal connection, that doesn't work. For instance, a friend's colleague's son was one of the police officers who was shot in the face at Bondi. He was told his son had been killed, only to find out later that he had survived.
Try faking that reaction in the office.
But the thing with a lot of these news stories is that the flow volume is so high and the consumption speed so fast and so detail ignorant, that it is very easy for false information to flow. And this is especially true for information that people share that supports their belief narrative. For instance, the fake Facebook profile was pretty obviously AI generated if looking at the details, because a lot of the words and grammar of the layout was incorrectly spelled. Yet, when people who want to believe are scrolling their phone, they aren't going to look at details, just the headline. Around a decade ago there were studies on the shares on social media, and how something like 90% of people shared without reading more than the first few lines. I would say they read less now.
As said, I like humour but these behaviours aren't funny. They aren't even intended to be funny. They are political positioning based on agendas. But no matter what of the many sides of opinion we are on and what we believe, we should all be questioning the mentality and personality of the people behind their creation in the first place. Because even if I were to support a particular side, people lying in order to create support for "my side" does the cause harm, not good. However, that is because I am someone who values truth, but unfortunately we are in the post-truth era. Influence of attention to ultimately generate profits for a few is all that matters, which means that misinformation that triggers emotional response and thoughtless action is more impactful than truth.
Information is a manipulation.
And misinformation is just intentionally bad information used to manipulate the audience into believing and acting as if the information they have is correct. We intentionally act on what we know and if what we know is a lie, we are going to act on it as if it is the truth. When we choose to remain ignorant in order to maintain our "truth", we are choosing to act on potentially incorrect information, with intention.
Everyone can believe what they want, but that doesn't make what they believe true. Belief doesn't legitimate intentional ignorance. But the problem is that we can always say "I was acting on the information I had available". But that is not as true anymore, because there is a lot of information available that people choose to omit from their pool of informational resources. And often, they aren't making an active choice of omission, because an algorithm is making the choice for them, and that algorithm is designed to feed them what supports their beliefs.
I wonder what someone's social feed would look like if all the content they got for the next year was chosen to challenge their current beliefs. Would it be possible to reverse a belief system through gradual exposure? Yes. And this is part of the problem, isn't it? Our belief systems are being manipulated by engineered design to maximise our support of an agenda. And that agenda, is profit at all cost. It capitalises on division, conflict, outrage and violence.
So is it any wonder that people are creating fake images to support their agendas?
This is what they have been conditioned to do. They have been taught to lie to support their beliefs, because that is where the incentive lays for them to get the attention they desire. Even without the individual monetizing that attention, it is still monetized for the platforms that host and distribute it. This is often forgotten when it is mentioned that a fake image has been viewed and shared millions of times, because it is possible that the original poster made no financial gain from it - but the platforms and news services did.
The people making these images are acting predictably.
Attention seekers, seeking attention. The easiest way to attract attention today is not by being good at something, not by inventing something useful, not by being a good person - it is by piggybacking polarising lies on top of dramatic events. And the negative will gain more traction than the positive, because that is what the algorithms are searching for.
The question still begs;
If your beliefs only hold true if supported by lies, what does that say?
Taraz
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