Trump and the Internet

[sealchan]

I have an idea I need to air out, expose to critical view and otherwise share because I think it might be another piece to the puzzle of why we went through this moment in our political history and why we will still go through it to some extent although I think that having Trump out of office will go a long way toward killing the momentum of it all.

Back in the day--or back in the corners of our world where things move slowly and as they did in times gone by before television, cable and the internet came with its promise of continuous feeding of the mind--information passed more slowly via newspapers or by word-of-mouth. This was the medium of knowledge and as the every-person on the street has been given the power to vote and make decisions and encouraged to form politically consequential understandings of the world far beyond their own direct and personal understanding, to the extent they felt it necessary, they were tasked with painting a picture of the world, based on this information and finding a comfortable place to call home within it. The frequency of new information was that of the daily paper or the speed of story-telling. Story-telling is fast but stories tend to get creatively diluted as they move and, as such, become somewhat a source of skepticism. The stories that win out in local areas are those that are selectively preserved, perhaps, by the story-tellers, the gossipers, etc. Most people, back in the day, had only their faith to use as a measure of the worth or likelihood of said stories and even news articles. Or they knew personally the story-tellers and were, through years of experience, able to glean their veracity. Entertainment and truth were, thereby, able to be kept each on their side of the aisle.

If you have ever had to manage your own, or other's anxiety, you soon come to realize that news and stories are always the more popular, the more intense, for the payload of anxiety that they carry. When the trickle of information was much slower, even the daily newspaper could be, perhaps, filtered and reflected on and digested and the anxiety processed. The information itself required either an extended chain of story-tellers whose local reputations had been proven over time or newspapers that required all the efforts and expenditures of a business venture plus the participation of its many employees all working to produce content that more or less would pass muster with its readers and not get them in trouble in the courtroom (slander).

But today the feeds are innumerable and continuous. These feeds are the work, in many cases, of individuals, not corporations. Individuals with no one to be held accountable to. Major media platforms which carry these feeds largely have not filtered or qualified the content. Individuals have a right to free speech after all and what harm can an individual do anyway?

Well the harm is that for all of those who have not learned how to filter the internet's many "truth-feeds", for all those who carry such feeds around in our pockets because that land line sitting on the side table in the family room doesn't cut it for personal remote contact any more, there is little or no guidance when that feed or those feeds tell us what is up. These feeds are, ironically, based on individual choices being made in content in an automated and unconscious collusion between the giant tech company and the psyche of the individual who may be reaching out, in their own anxiety, and looking for answers...answers promised, perhaps, more and more by a responsive group of individuals who know these info-noobs and know how to feed their anxieties...whether local conspiracy nuts (as they used to be called) or foreign actors seeking to mold public discourse in a nation with significant economic or political power to stand in the way of their own ambitions...these feeds become significant influencers and their followers get swept away in the deluge of anxiety and the dark tales of the manifest order than is behind it all, the Great Conspiracy that brings all other conspiracies together and rules them all. Identifying that source of their fear in an unseen but all too believable vast conspiracy, makes their anxieties take shape and gives them some power to fight back.

So now we see how Trump's rhetoric comes in. Always ready to sew chaos, he has given voice to conspiracy theories, dark secrets whispered in the ears and flashed in the eyes of many who are not otherwise able to filter such information especially when Facebook won't do it. Information that looks as right or even better than the truth. The truth is often so very less "sexy" (aka anxiety provoking or anxiety revoking) than stories that could, and are, told. And with the willing collusion of right-leaning organizations such as certain news outlets and religious institutions which have built up strong political ties, we have the formation of an alternative reality culture based on an inability to put into full context the veracity of any given truth-seller. Because the wisdom to filter so much information has lagged significantly behind our technology to support the distribution of unqualified thoughts, we have seen the business sector begin to support and promote wholesale fallacies since such fallacies generate sufficient revenue amongst a group of people who are willing to buy in.

Trump, then, rises to power, and takes over a substantial portion of the conservative crowd to achieve the sort of support that renders individual loyalty above and beyond personal morality or professional ethical considerations. Those who are unable to square so much information against a slower, more considered and naturally filtered flow of information as they may have had, back in the day, are left to the mercy of this anxiety driven feedback loop. I see Trump as a generational figure whose appeal will diminish as the generations raised on the Internet and the Internet itself becomes less "Wild West" as it matures. Hopefully we are seeing the beginning of this maturation with the fallout of the Capitol Insurrection and the legal fallouts in criminal prosecutions as well as law suits that are taking place. Also the actions taken by Facebook and Twitter to finally put a limit on content promoted by prominent public figures when that content is wildly irresponsible and demonstrably able to result in the injury or deaths of innocent people.

The story I tell above is based, I hope, on many valid observations and I can flesh it out more if desired.

Any and all comments welcome.

 

[Sunstone]

That's one of the best takes on any of the causes of our current mess that I've come across published anywhere. Thanks, @sealchan!

As you implied, there can't be any fewer than several causes. A sort of 'perfect storm'.

That said, American culture for historical reasons has a decisive anti-intellectual filter permanently installed in it. Among other things, that is likely to mean the public discussion of these things will consist of bumper-sticker talking points, and much more than merely half of them will send people down rabbit holes in their pursuit of the truth.

To me, that's just a fact of life. If you aren't formally trained in the best methods and practices for getting at something close to the truth of things, you are far more likely to be informally trained by your favorite hosts and guests on your favorite media outlets and internet platforms, including RF. And that's just one place your training can start.

Humans are social animals. We ape each other. Most often without seeing it as such.

No one likes to hear this. No one. But about the fastest way to dumb down is to pay too much attention to people you have reason to believe are shoveling more BS than is usual for people. The Lakota proverb, "Choose your enemies wisely, because you become like them." certainly applies here.

Even with the best training imaginable, and decades of practice, it is so easy to screw up.

 

[sealchan]

That's one of the best takes on any of the causes of our current mess that I've come across published anywhere. Thanks, @sealchan!

As you implied, there can't be any fewer than several causes. A sort of 'perfect storm'.

That said, American culture for historical reasons has a decisive anti-intellectual filter permanently installed in it. Among other things, that is likely to mean the public discussion of these things will consist of bumper-sticker talking points, and much more than merely half of them will send people down rabbit holes in their pursuit of the truth.

To me, that's just a fact of life. If you aren't formally trained in the best methods and practices for getting at something close to the truth of things, you are far more likely to be informally trained by your favorite hosts and guests on your favorite media outlets and internet platforms, including RF. And that's just one place your training can start.

Humans are social animals. We ape each other. Most often without seeing it as such.

No one likes to hear this. No one. But about the fastest way to dumb down is to pay too much attention to people you have reason to believe are shoveling more BS than is usual for people. The Lakota proverb, "Choose your enemies wisely, because you become like them." certainly applies here.

Even with the best training imaginable, and decades of practice, it is so easy to screw up.

Thanks!

I recognize our continual unconscious formative influences as you suggest. We are all casually accepting of certain stories that fit our groove. In this case the dynamic did lead to a sort of "perfect storm" but I think that although the storm is not over, it is hopefully diminishing. There are just too many incentives in our reality to want to continue to accept this particular brand of conspiracy-ing and denialism. The consequences too are too dangerous. The pace of change is too fast for those who wish to bunker down in their local cultures and not have to accommodate any larger reality. Understanding this bunker mentality may help us to understand this danger to our democracy. The computer/internet revolution is currently creating some very disturbing back-currents and we should attend to them and treat them like the natural phenomenon of human social culture they are. We may need to accommodate those who have fallen off the info wagon and find themselves being picked up by a trump train in the sense of offering them some sort of supportive, non-hostile recognition while, at the same time, expecting from them that they "show and not just tell" their truth.

 

[Sunstone]

I was thinking of 'perfect storm' in the much larger context of all the key causes coming together to create this moment. Not just those involving information.

e.g. Policy changes that created the two tier economy that has left a growing number of people feeling they are being screwed. And probably about a dozen other things.

 

[Ponder This]

If I understand your argument, you claim that slower media consumption leads to better news consumption and that internet news consumption leads to the perpetuation of false narratives.
How do you explain the support Trump receives from people such as the Amish who do not engage in internet or other advanced technological media consumption?

It seems to me that the news is always biased and that this has little to do with the internet.

 

[sealchan]

If I understand your argument, you claim that slower media consumption leads to better news consumption and that internet news consumption leads to the perpetuation of false narratives.
How do you explain the support Trump receives from people such as the Amish who do not engage in internet or other advanced technological media consumption?

It seems to me that the news is always biased and that this has little to do with the internet.

Well, if the Amish tend to support Trump but they do not consume the media that Trump is so in favor of using...then are they not likely to be defaulting to supporting the leading conservative candidate?

I doubt that Trump would last one minute in an Amish community were he to seek to participate in their society.

I'm not trying to blame the media exactly but rather recognize the role that the media plays in how people get their information, what quality of information that is and how feedback loops have formed to reinforce individual fears and anxieties about the world. Also how people before the internet may have been more balanced in their view than after because of some of the rapid response loops (marketing in the form of audience awareness) and high volume information flow literally overwhelms our sense of meaning making.

As the myth goes, there once was a time when someone could be a polymath who knew all the knowledge of the world as an individual. Now, with the vast amount of knowledge, we know we can never achieve such an understanding. We are now faced, with each new YouTube channel, with an experience of a river of information so wide and so vast that we may never cross it. We each have to face our own insignificance when it comes to the mountains of opinion and the oceans of data that exist to pour through. How can we confidently make meaningful decisions in our lives against such insurmountable barriers? It is enough to tempt one to abandon reason alltogether. And for those who already feel on the outside of all this technology and non-traditional cultural attitudes...it literally is to much. The Amish, perhaps, represent this principle the best in that they have long been the one's to opt out of the future as we know it.

 

[PureX]

I don't think it's the opinions of our fellow individuals that affect us. Because I think we've all mostly learned to be reasonably skeptical of these. I think the real issue is with previously trusted mediums for information having become commodity peddlers for profit. That commodity being emotionally charged interpretations of information, instead of the information, itself, without the interpretation.

It used to be that sources of information simply provided us with the information. The presenters did not judge, nor encourage us to judge. But now these source are selling a commodity, and that commodity is our attention. So that the more of this they can garner, the more money they can make off it. They are no longer in the business of providing information to the public. They are now in the business of providing emotionally charged information intended to garner as much of the public's attention as they can, for as long as they can. And the accuracy of the information has been replaced by it's effectiveness at garnering our attention, as the primary concern.

Donald Trump's whole "career" is that of a human spectacle. People have been fascinated by him as an icon of wealth, and of arrogance, and of unmitigated selfishness, and of social indifference and irresponsibility, for decades. He's the bad boy that half of us loathed, and the other half wanted to be. And we just couldn't stop watching him, which gave him enormous power over the media, and over other politicians, all of whom rely on the public's attention for their livelihoods.

It's not the bloviating politicians that's new, it's the thousands of media "information providers" looking to cash in on our fascination with them.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I think it always comes down to what individuals regard as trusted sources.

Unfortunately, it probably results in choosing those sources that are exclusively agreeable to one's own particular views and perspectives without checking for accuracy.

 

[metis]

New I think it always comes down to what individuals regard as trusted sources.

I don't trust any source, thus I do what they taught me in elementary school a "few" years ago: crosscheck the problems.

 

[Wandering Monk]

I think there should be a license requirement in Rational Thinking before people are allowed to use the Interweb. Don't you have to have a license before you can watch television in the UK?

 

[sealchan]

I was thinking of 'perfect storm' in the much larger context of all the key causes coming together to create this moment. Not just those involving information.

e.g. Policy changes that created the two tier economy that has left a growing number of people feeling they are being screwed. And probably about a dozen other things.

The declining percentage of white Europeans....
The recent event of having had a black president and then a woman as president...
Global warming and its impact on policies on rural communties...
Trump's probable unintended motivating of the #MeToo movement...
And the following Black Lives Matter protests...
Covid driving anxieties generally...

Yah, perfect storm.

 

[sealchan]

I think it always comes down to what individuals regard as trusted sources.

Unfortunately, it probably results in choosing those sources that are exclusively agreeable to one's own particular views and perspectives without checking for accuracy.

Yes, but I think there are a large number of people who choose their sources with skepticism. But who is more likely to do so? Someone who has learned and experienced perspectives outside of their own local culture or those who have intentionally turned away from a wider world and seek to shut it out?

 

[sealchan]

I don't trust any source, thus I do what they taught me in elementary school a "few" years ago: crosscheck the problems.

Yes, and now with the Internet this is so much easier to do.

 

[Ponder This]

Well, if the Amish tend to support Trump but they do not consume the media that Trump is so in favor of using...then are they not likely to be defaulting to supporting the leading conservative candidate?

I doubt that Trump would last one minute in an Amish community were he to seek to participate in their society.

I'm not trying to blame the media exactly but rather recognize the role that the media plays in how people get their information, what quality of information that is and how feedback loops have formed to reinforce individual fears and anxieties about the world. Also how people before the internet may have been more balanced in their view than after because of some of the rapid response loops (marketing in the form of audience awareness) and high volume information flow literally overwhelms our sense of meaning making.

As the myth goes, there once was a time when someone could be a polymath who knew all the knowledge of the world as an individual. Now, with the vast amount of knowledge, we know we can never achieve such an understanding. We are now faced, with each new YouTube channel, with an experience of a river of information so wide and so vast that we may never cross it. We each have to face our own insignificance when it comes to the mountains of opinion and the oceans of data that exist to pour through. How can we confidently make meaningful decisions in our lives against such insurmountable barriers? It is enough to tempt one to abandon reason alltogether. And for those who already feel on the outside of all this technology and non-traditional cultural attitudes...it literally is to much. The Amish, perhaps, represent this principle the best in that they have long been the one's to opt out of the future as we know it.

Perhaps the problems with current internet media serve to explain why Trump is not even more popular. Negative portrayals of Trump become their own negative feedback loops of doom.