Fake Agency // Personal Power
First social media faked influence, then the hucksters enabled those who consume and share information that is blatantly made-up. Can we reclaim critical thinking?
We live once again in an age that conflates most things with amusement. Social media turned influence into vanity metrics. Memes, slogans, one-liners are designed to do one thing and one thing only—to grab attention.
Whether the attention is genuine and the credentials are authentic, that depends on many factors. Chief among them the ability and desire for critical thinking.
Just when we thought things couldn’t get any weirder, there’s now a resurgence of magic. Even the weather is up for grabs. Make no mistake, humanity is responsible for the phenomenons related with climate change.
But that happened over time, not in the manner (and by the groups) some would have us believe. Are they lies or plain bullshit? I do wonder…
“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction,” says Harry Frankfurt.
And people who believe in supernatural phenomena and conspiracy theories have a higher propensity to judge bullshit statements as profound.1
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Give these people statements and stories that confirm their beliefs and what you have is ‘fake agency.’ We can now see the cult-like devotion to irrationality among a certain segment of the population clearly.
Charlie Warzel says “what’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.” Just when we thought we heard it all, the weather has become the latest point of contention.
It seems a meaningful percentage of the population has disassociated from reality. As I said in the mini-series on time travel, influence and agency play a large role in humans’ desire to engage with events.
“So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued,
‘The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.’”
Charlie Warzel
In the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton, there’s a group of people who needs to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Sadly, this state of affairs makes a mockery of the pain, suffering, and loss of the people affected.
Make no mistake, those who consume and share fake information have agency. And the reality of climate change has become another front from which to battle evidence—and meteorologists have become fair game to malign and threaten.
“Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts.
But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.”
Charlie Warzel
If the world feels dark, it’s because in many ways it is. Human nature has a dark side, and fear can play scary tricks on the mind. The responsibility for stoking the flames sits squarely in the camp of the hucksters and cons who spread bullshit.
We’re also accountable. However, as anyone who’s ever tried to change someone’s mind knows well, worldview is hard to shift. The task is akin to asking someone to change their entire existence.
Beliefs are more powerful than scientific arguments, identity has deep roots in them.
In his 1980 essay, ‘A Cult of Ignorance’ Isaac Asimov noted, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.”
Asimov wasn’t just a writer, he was also a scientist. One of the millions of people who came to America as a toddler with his parents. He taught himself to read by the age of 5, graduated from high school at 15 to enter Columbia University and earn a Bachelor of Science degree in 1939, then whent on to get a MA and Ph.D.
As an adult, he became a prolific author of science fiction—known for Foundation and I, Robot, he wrote 500 books—nonfiction, and mystery stories. All the while he taught biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine.
Further, Susan Jacoby noted that the anti-intellectualism that has been in America since its founding has intensified.2 Isaac Asimov points to the psychology behind the phenomenon.
“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
You may recognize some of the language Asimov cites—‘don’t trust the experts!’ But also the charge of ‘elitism’ in an attempt to make those who worked to learn history, philosophy, literature, and the rest feel “guilty about having gone to school.”
More than a lack desire to learn, the culprit could be the inability to read. Jacoby points to American educational policy. She says the resistance to national standards cripples areas all over the country and creates pockets of ignorance.
Asimov’s examples come from the political world. Public opinion is a principal tool in the hands of politicians. The consequences fill entire news cycles.
And yet, yet… there’s much we can do with agency (and a vanity-free idea of influence.)
To counter cheap online talk that fuels fear (of the truth) we can do things to mitigate— dare I say, even solve—the overwhelming problems we face.
Constructive action beats speculation. But before we can act, we need to acknowledge that there is a problem.
Noam Chomsky said no qualifications are necessary to observe what’s going on. In fact, anyone has the intellectual capacity to read history and observe culture critically.
“Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it’s necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything—that’s part of how you teach people they can’t do anything, they’re helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.”
Noam Chomsky
True agency depends on the ability to hold and test ideas, not jump to conclusions. Can we reclaim our personal power?
For one, we can become more familiar with ‘the art of crap detection,’ as the late professor of communications Neil Postman called critical thinking.
“Sensitivity to the phony uses of language requires, to some extent, knowledge of how to ask questions, how to validate answers, and certainly, how to assess meanings.”
But there’s more.
Neil Postman and many others wrote at length about the power of technology and media over human thought. I’ve writtten often about technology and its ilk. Cons, griftrers, and hucksters also use media to manipulate public opinion.
Things are never at the extremes. But the extremes are useful to keep things separated. ‘Dividi et impera,’ divide and rule (or conquer) has been a slogan since Roman times. And that’s their game.
Yet, the reality is that the people at the extremes are usually few. Most of us are in the middle, and so is often reality. The hoaxers obfuscate, lie, and bullshit to get what they want.
And to do that, they use strategies that take advantage of human nature. Though the original provenance of this pseudo-Chomsky list is uncertain, it can be useful to be on guard and become aware of its strategies.
Because these ten strategies are often used to manipulate opinion through mass media.
Further, it’s not always immediately apparent that a publication or website is legitimate—or designed to spread propaganda. The sheer mass of publications online makes it difficult to vet, but also takes advantage of numbers to reinforce a story.
So it takes a bit more to parse the wheat from the chaff in our communication systems and culture. Some of the strategies are easier to observe than others, too.
1. Distraction
The primordial element of social control is the strategy of distraction through the technique of the deluge or flooding of continuous distractions and insignificant information. This diverts the attention of the public from the important problems and changes decided by the political and economic elites.
2. Problem-reaction-solution
A problem is created—a ‘situation’ expected to cause a certain reaction. The aim of the instigator is to pass measures to counter the problem. Acceptance without scrutiny is itself a problem.
3. Gradualness
Drip, drip, drip for consecutive years and an unacceptable measure becomes accepted. In politics, this goes by the name Overton window. A mass communication scheme that could be manipulative, capable of implementing a skillful and very subtle form of occult persuasion.
You start from an idea that is unacceptable to public opinion. Then through precise processes and phases you make it palatable, acceptable, and even legalized.
Phase 0: current state, the problem is unacceptable
Phase 1: from the unthinkable to the radical
Phase 2: from radical to acceptable
Phase 3: from acceptable to sensible
Phase 4: from the sensible to the popular
Phase 5: from the popular to the political
Phase 6: legalization
4. Deferral
Another way to get an unpopular decision accepted is to present it as ‘painful and necessary,’ gaining public acceptance—in the moment—for future application. It’s easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate one.
5. Public as children
We can see this in most of the advertising directed at the general public. The speech, arguments, characters and intonation can be particularly childish—as if the viewer were a young child, or someone mentally deficient.
6. Emotion rather than reflection
Messages exploits emotion—a classic technique to cause a short circuit on a rational analysis and, ultimately, bypass critical thinking or even common sense.
7. Ignorance and mediocrity maintenance
Communication and messages render the public unable to understand the technologies and methods used for control.
“The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be as poor and mediocre as possible, so that the distance of ignorance that they plan between the lower classes and the upper classes is and remains impossible to fill by the lower classes.”
8. Complacency in mediocrity
The average person doesn’t exist. Though many of us may behave differently at various times, yet are not dissimilar from each other (as part of humankind), a person is many things. How are we doing with complacency in quick fixes and hacks?
9. Self-guilt
This is designed to make you believe that it’s your fault if things aren’t going well. Insufficient intelligence, abilities or effort are usually the culprits. So instead of action plans against the system, the blame is individual. It’s also easy to see how personal failure demotivates action. Fairness principle, my foot. We rarely see how our beliefs impact reality, do we?
10. Knowledge
Rapid advances in science and knowledge over the past fifty years have generated a growing gap between the public and the ruling elites. Yet, there’s also a growing number of independent sources that are credible and reliable. The challenge is to find and use them.
When information becomes a ‘market,’ then the incentives are to sell what people want to believe. You become an authority ‘if you give credibility to our identities.’
Rather than a common language and mode of communication, messages then move downstream to simple validation. But personal power comes from the ability to parse the narrative, not play the victim.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
Antonio Gramsci
Some people point to their beliefs as a path to change. Indeed, we all want change. But history teaches us to watch for those who take advantage of an old world that dies. There’s a gap there.
Before the new world comes about, that’s when profiteers, opportunists, grifters, and cons try to grab all they can for themselves. Their trade—lies and bullshit—are to prop themselves and their ego. The type of human agency they dispense is fake.
Next Week
Part 2 of time travel—Literary works clue us into influence and agency of the past; trends and predictions illustrate the difficulty to imagine the future.
I didn’t make it up. A recent research paper on the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit asks an important question— “who is most likely to fall prey to bullshit and why?” The researchers used applications that randomly mash together ‘buzzwords’ into a sentence with a certain syntactic structure but no discernible meaning to tested susceptibility.
Jacoby, Susan, The Age of Unreason (Vintage; Reprint edition, 2009) — a book-length argument that cites research.