Reality, if you don’t sufficiently attend to it, has a tendency to kick your ass
Dorian Taylor is a certified Smart Person making things that I don’t even understand. What I want to focus on here, however, is his overview of Dr Kate Starbird’s recent talk.
Starbird gives an overview of the self-reinforcing right-wing disinformation ecosystem where participants are rewarded — implicitly or explicitly — for creating an alternate reality. It’s no surprise, therefore, that those who are taking charge in around the world are those that can use and amplify this disinformation.
It’s worth pointing out, as [this Bluesky post] (https://bsky.app/profile/suchmayer.bsky.social/post/3ljrwhvvitk2j) does, that it’s not as if the intention to create alternate realities hasn’t always been there. It’s just that with the consumer technologies available these days, there’s more scope for “free-for-all improv theatre.” It’s all entertainment; it’s a game with extremely serious consequences.
[The] right-wing (dis)information ecosystem is highly participatory, per Dr. Starbird: “improvised collaborations between witting agents and unwitting though willing crowds of sincere believers”. It’s a free-for-all improv theatre with all sorts of incentives for various actors to participate, from individual curiosity-seekers, to media personalities, to hostile state actors. It rewards participation and affords a conduit for any participant to get up on stage and perform for the audience, influence elite talking points, shape policy, and win fabulous cash prizes. The right-wing disinformation ratchet operates as follows:
- Political elites set the frame (“immigrants are criminals”),
- random participants make spurious claims (“they’re eating your pets”),
- the claims get boosted on social media by various influencers,
- they get aggregated and concentrated on—and further boosted by—fringe websites and blogs,
- Joe Rogan (or whoever) repeats the most salient claim on his podcast,
- the claim eventually makes it on Fox News,
- and is then rebroadcast from the bully pulpit,
- which energizes the mob and motivates them to continue.
The rest of the media ecosystem, by contrast, still adheres to a top-down model of broadcasting polished and vetted messages, researched and workshopped by professionals of rapidly dwindling efficacy.
[…]
On its face, fighting back against the right-wing bullshit apparatus amounts to a massive collective action problem—the very kind, with some adjustments, that said apparatus is great at mobilizing. So step one is to copy them. They have an advantage, though, which I find troubling: they don’t have to worry about reality.
[…]
How do you fight an information war when you’re on the side of reality? When reality usually doesn’t matter? The key, I am beginning to suspect, is except when it does. Reality, if you don’t sufficiently attend to it, has a tendency to kick your ass. This can be wielded as a weapon.
Source: The Making of Making Sense
Image: Elimende Inagella