Great writeup, Purple! I really liked this article. I have one nitpick, though. Gen Z isn't going to get any more influence than Gen X did. Just as we always lived in the shadow of the Baby Boomers and were never able to change one policy to not favor the Boomers, Gen Z will always be dwarfed by the Millennials. I doubt they'll ever get out from under the Millennial bootheel. I think that's why they complain so loudly. Which is better than my generation did, by shrugging and quoting Nirvana. But political control will never be theirs; there just isn't enough of them.
Zoomers and Millennials are so close politically that I don't imagine there will be much less cultural divide than with the boomers and everyone else. I think the real wedge will be between the Xers and everyone else. The Xers were the last generation to live through a successful Republican presidency and many Xers have an entirely different view of how the world works than the generations who grew up under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump.
Entertainment over education....it sells! It also creates winners vs. losers scenarios.....and who doesn't want to be the "W" or hang with the "winning" crowd! This is what happens in late stage, out of control Capitalism.....it's not about truth or good or amity....it's about winning at all cost, social status and more $$$$ in spite of truth. I don't think this Genie can be put back into the bottle.
As someone who made a documentary about the 2016 political media coverage and included "The Post Truth Era" in the subtitle, I'd like to push back a bit. While I agree with your points, they are more from a media consumer perspective and not from the perspective on those creating the media content being consumed. The biggest driver of the misinformation--ie post truth--are the politicians, political advocates and their hired help who have torn down the fences that we put up since the 1920s to combat misinformation and biased media. While we can set many markers as to when this trend began, I peg it to Michael Deaver, Ronald Reagan's Deputy CoS who once observed that he didn't care about what a TV story "said" about Reagan, rather what it showed. (I forget the exact details, but the quote originated from a discussion he had with a reporter asking for comment about what the reporter thought was a tough TV story against Reagan, but Deaver loved the story because the visuals sent an opposite message than the actually reporting). So for the last 40 years politicians and advocacy groups slowly stopped ignoring the norms and starting lying to people and found they could get away with it without facing any serious penalties.
Also, you ignore the new and fundamentally different nature of digital media. While lying to others is a long, long time human tradition, never in human history have we had a communication medium that allows anyone the ability to reach a mass audience AND have the audience interact with this content individually. No more priests limiting access to scared writings, no editors seeking more facts from a writer, no more filters or experts deciding what is "important" news and what's not. The result?
My film: Democracy Through the Looking Glass: Politics and Media in the Post-Truth Era
The point isn't "post truth" its that it is an "era." This kind of attitude and unintelligent thinking has been around forever, and will continue to be. The only differences are who is doing it and who it is impacting.
(I presume you and) I grew up in an era of voter / citizen consent (imagined by Walter Lippmann and critique by Noam Chomsky) based on the "truth" constructed in the 20s and 30s around the concept of objective journalism that vetted things. That era crumbled starting in the 80s and 90s and has evolved into an era where "truth" can not be trusted. Hence we are in a post truth era. It won't (we hope) be forever and hopefully we'll find/create a new construct where we all can "agree" what is "true".
In some of my research, I was shown a political cartoon from the days of Yellow Journalism in the late 19th, early 20th century, where one of the characters was wearing a "Fake News" text on their back. This supports both our points...in that in different times of history "truth" was was less trusted than other times in history. The era of Yellow Journalism--which motivated Lippmann to call for objective journalistic standards--was a "post-truth era". Just as we today live in a post truth era, in that people don't trust the info they get. And I would argue that for all its flaws, from the 30's to the 80's we did trust the news. I'm ready to concede MAYBE that era was the historic anomaly, but if it happened once, we can do it again.
Great writeup, Purple! I really liked this article. I have one nitpick, though. Gen Z isn't going to get any more influence than Gen X did. Just as we always lived in the shadow of the Baby Boomers and were never able to change one policy to not favor the Boomers, Gen Z will always be dwarfed by the Millennials. I doubt they'll ever get out from under the Millennial bootheel. I think that's why they complain so loudly. Which is better than my generation did, by shrugging and quoting Nirvana. But political control will never be theirs; there just isn't enough of them.
Zoomers and Millennials are so close politically that I don't imagine there will be much less cultural divide than with the boomers and everyone else. I think the real wedge will be between the Xers and everyone else. The Xers were the last generation to live through a successful Republican presidency and many Xers have an entirely different view of how the world works than the generations who grew up under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump.
Entertainment over education....it sells! It also creates winners vs. losers scenarios.....and who doesn't want to be the "W" or hang with the "winning" crowd! This is what happens in late stage, out of control Capitalism.....it's not about truth or good or amity....it's about winning at all cost, social status and more $$$$ in spite of truth. I don't think this Genie can be put back into the bottle.
As someone who made a documentary about the 2016 political media coverage and included "The Post Truth Era" in the subtitle, I'd like to push back a bit. While I agree with your points, they are more from a media consumer perspective and not from the perspective on those creating the media content being consumed. The biggest driver of the misinformation--ie post truth--are the politicians, political advocates and their hired help who have torn down the fences that we put up since the 1920s to combat misinformation and biased media. While we can set many markers as to when this trend began, I peg it to Michael Deaver, Ronald Reagan's Deputy CoS who once observed that he didn't care about what a TV story "said" about Reagan, rather what it showed. (I forget the exact details, but the quote originated from a discussion he had with a reporter asking for comment about what the reporter thought was a tough TV story against Reagan, but Deaver loved the story because the visuals sent an opposite message than the actually reporting). So for the last 40 years politicians and advocacy groups slowly stopped ignoring the norms and starting lying to people and found they could get away with it without facing any serious penalties.
Also, you ignore the new and fundamentally different nature of digital media. While lying to others is a long, long time human tradition, never in human history have we had a communication medium that allows anyone the ability to reach a mass audience AND have the audience interact with this content individually. No more priests limiting access to scared writings, no editors seeking more facts from a writer, no more filters or experts deciding what is "important" news and what's not. The result?
My film: Democracy Through the Looking Glass: Politics and Media in the Post-Truth Era
The 2 minute trailer: https://youtu.be/uGpdxwn_pdg?si=vXUj7cG-pn-X45qt
The full 75 minute version: https://youtu.be/ATktPy8vOgo?si=Unz9JMNCmz99yd65
The point isn't "post truth" its that it is an "era." This kind of attitude and unintelligent thinking has been around forever, and will continue to be. The only differences are who is doing it and who it is impacting.
(I presume you and) I grew up in an era of voter / citizen consent (imagined by Walter Lippmann and critique by Noam Chomsky) based on the "truth" constructed in the 20s and 30s around the concept of objective journalism that vetted things. That era crumbled starting in the 80s and 90s and has evolved into an era where "truth" can not be trusted. Hence we are in a post truth era. It won't (we hope) be forever and hopefully we'll find/create a new construct where we all can "agree" what is "true".
In some of my research, I was shown a political cartoon from the days of Yellow Journalism in the late 19th, early 20th century, where one of the characters was wearing a "Fake News" text on their back. This supports both our points...in that in different times of history "truth" was was less trusted than other times in history. The era of Yellow Journalism--which motivated Lippmann to call for objective journalistic standards--was a "post-truth era". Just as we today live in a post truth era, in that people don't trust the info they get. And I would argue that for all its flaws, from the 30's to the 80's we did trust the news. I'm ready to concede MAYBE that era was the historic anomaly, but if it happened once, we can do it again.