Croyez-moi, je vous mens

In a world of no context and no standard, the connotations of the past retain their power, even if those things are fractions of what they once were. Blogs, to paraphrase Kierkegaard, left everything standing but cunningly emptied them of significance. [...] Why does this matter? We’ve been taught to believe what we read. That where there is smoke there must be fire, and that if someone takes the time to write down and publish something, they believe in what they are saying. The wisdom behind those beliefs is no longer true, yet the public marches on, armed with rules of thumb that make them targets for manipulation rather than protection.

There is no intent to instruct in what we see on blogs. Just gawking. That is their true function. Their degradation is mere spectacle that blogs use to sublimate the general anxieties of their readers. To make us feel better by hurting others. To stress that the people we’re reading about are freaks, while we are normal. And if we’re not getting anything out of it, and nobody learns anything from it, then I don’t see how you can call blogs anything other than a digital blood sport.

We have to be able to handle that—as adults—and forgive and forget the occasional stupid remark. We can’t turn everyone into a laughingstock, or pretty soon the only type of person left will be Donald Trump.* Because you know who doesn’t mind snark or mockery? Who likes it? The answer is obvious: People with nothing to lose. People who need to be talked about, like attention-hungry reality stars.

Our online culture is both fueled by and ruled by this bitterness and anger that pretend that other people aren’t human beings.

Blogs, I understand from Wilde and Cromer, serve the hidden function of dispensing public punishments. Think of the Salem witch trials: They weren’t court proceedings but ceremonies. In that light, the events three hundred years ago suddenly feel very real and current: They were doing with trumped-up evidence and the gallows what we do with speculation and sensationalism. Ours is just a more civilized way to tear someone to pieces.

Once the mind has accepted a plausible explanation for something, it becomes a framework for all the information that is perceived afterward. We’re drawn, subconsciously, to fit and contort all the subsequent knowledge we receive into our framework, whether it fits or not. Psychologists call this cognitive rigidity. The facts that built an original premise are gone, but the conclusion remains

Suppressing one’s instinct to interpret and speculate, until the totality of evidence arrives, is a skill that detectives and doctors train for years to develop. This is not something we regular humans are good at; in fact, we’re wired to do the opposite.

Do you make a habit of checking back on Wikipedia pages just to make sure nothing has changed? The reality is that while the internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively. Each member usually sees what he or she sees a single time—a snapshot of the process—and draws his or her conclusions from that.

It’s a real golden age for journalists when they not only get traffic by posting jaw-dropping rumors, but then also get traffic the next day by shooting down the same rumors they created.

How can any person prepare for or defend themselves against scandal or innuendo when the media have utterly abdicated their role in vetting the information they publish?