Most folks reading this know I’m not on Facebook. I was, for a while. I liked that it kept me “sorta connected” to a bunch of people.
But Facebook was always frustratingly insistent on presenting content they wanted me to see, and what they wanted and what I wanted were different. By late 2017 I’d deactivated my account, and after “giving it one more go” several months later, I downloaded “my” data (go ahead, laugh) and closed the account “for good.”
These days I find myself again looking for ways to control how much toxic media I consume, and having already picked the proverbial “low hanging fruit” slightly complicates things.
Since quitting Facebook, though, what I was trying to avoid has metastasized through “normal” media, so even if I could leave Facebook again it wouldn’t solve the problem. I’m not even sure it would move the needle, honestly.
Lately, I’ve been consuming most of my news from The Financial Times and The Economist – both unabashed bastions of politically-biased perl-clutching propaganda.
And while it seems like I’m remaining “reasonably well informed” and consuming fewer fabrications and overt attempts at manipulation, I can’t say it’s making me much happier.
What it’s helped me notice is that when I do read something from the “mainstream” media – on either side – the sense of panic is palpable.
The left seem terrified about the trajectory America has set itself on. There’s always some new ranting or failing of the unhinged narcissist at the helm. And there’s his merry band of sycophants, intent on undoing decades of American influence and political soft power around the world. And all this against the backdrop of crazily pulling the trigger on the economic foot-gun ‘till it clicks. On quiet days there’s the idiot-savant, tasked with finding the massive stockpiles of weapons of mass fraud in government programs, who’s unafraid to move erratically, salute like a Nazi, and break things.
The right seem terrified that the lunatic left might manage to take back the reigns of power. And they’re sure that, if that happens, taxes, immigration, and woke-ness will all be turned back up to 11. The right is fighting to prevent conservatives (and their kids) being strapped in – eyes held open Clockwork Orange style – and made to stare at uncomfortable things, like gender fluidity (clearly a dastardly creation of the modern liberal left, ignoring it’s long history “in the closet”).
All that aside, in basically every article I find some “fact” that smells funny. And if I take the time to check, that fact is often (only) true “from a certain point of view.”
Neither side of the political spectrum has cornered the market for cherry picked facts, or has an exclusive on carefully walking the “technically correct” line. And most of us – me included – don’t have the time, focus, or discipline to be consistently skeptical. To fact check everything we’re watching or reading, even when – especially when – it agrees with our biases and preconceptions.
Seeking to disprove one’s own hypothesis is exhausting.
I remember talking with some colleagues – years ago – about how, as the body of human knowledge grows in breadth and depth (we know more about more things), our ability to evaluate the claims from someone who credibly claims to be expert in a subject we’re not has basically vanished.
It takes an expert to debunk an expert, and when we aren’t the expert we have to choose which expert we believe. We often believe the experts our parents did, or our spiritual leaders do, or our political party endorses.
Increasingly though, the Internet has made us all experts at everything. With a quick web search, or a hastily posed question to our favorite large language model, we can “know” a little bit about anything.
This is when some of you are probably remembering the first bit of the famous passage from Alexander Pope:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
And I wonder how many of us remember the rest:
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
In other words, dive in deep or don’t swim at all. Keep going until you’re thoroughly informed, or stop before you start.
I remember first encountering this passage and being… unconvinced. Surely knowing something about many things must be good, mustn’t it?
More and more, I’m forced to concede that he may have had a point.