Croyez-moi, je vous mens

Aujourd'hui, la télévision n'est plus le premier support culturel. Internet l'a remplacée. Les blogs l'ont remplacée. You Tube, également. Ainsi que Twitter. Ce sont eux qui contrôlent notre culture exactement comme a pu le faire la télévision en son temps. Mais Internet obéit à un autre dieu : le trafic. Le Web vit et meurt au rythme des clics, car ce sont eux qui déterminent l'influence d'un blog et le chiffre d'affaires généré par la publicité. La question cruciale posée par Internet n'est pas de savoir si un contenu est divertissant ou pas, mais de savoir s'il attirera votre attention, s'il se propagera.

The problem is that facts are rarely clearly good or bad. They just are. The truth is often boring and complicated. Navigating this quandary forces marketers and publishers to conspire to distort this information into something that will register on the emotional spectrum of the audience. [...] Behind the scenes I work to crank up the valence of articles, relying on scandal, conflict, triviality, titillation, and dogmatism. Whatever will ensure transmission.

“The internet commoditized the distribution of facts. The ‘news’ media responded by pivoting wholesale into opinions and entertainment.”

You don’t get infected when you interact with someone you disagree with—or have at times found obnoxious or offensive. In fact, you can usually learn something.

You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If, as a culture, we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.

When readers decide to start demanding quality over quantity, the economics of internet content will change. Manipulation and marketing will immediately become more difficult.

Journalists should think twice before publishing a sex tape that arrives to their offices in an unmarked envelope. Journalists should do actual research before running stories (Gawker would have clearly seen that Hogan had said many times that the tape was recorded without his consent). The public does not have the right to know every single thing people do in their private bedrooms. There is such a thing as “the line” in civilized society.

What we think we know turns out to be based on nothing, or worse than nothing—misdirection and embellishment. Our facts aren’t facts; they are opinions dressed up like facts. Our opinions aren’t opinions; they are emotions that feel like opinions. Our information isn’t information; it’s just hastily assembled symbols.

It is now almost cliché for people to say, “If the news is important, it will find me.” This belief itself relies on abandoned shells. It depends on the assumption that the important news will break through the noise while the trivial will be lost. It could not be more wrong. As I discovered in my media manipulations, the information that finds us online—what spreads—is the worst kind. It raised itself above the din not through its value, importance, or accuracy but through the opposite, through slickness, titillation, and polarity.

We live in a media world that desperately needs context and authority but can’t find any because we destroyed the old markers and haven’t created reliable new ones. As a result, we couch new things in old terms that are really just husks of what they once were. Skepticism will never be enough to combat this.