""Post Truth" politics"

sufi

lala
sundersays said:
"Post-truth politics" translates as 'I don't understand why my side is losing, when we are cleverer, to stupid people I don't like"
Best thing I read so far on this so called phenomenon, which has now attained full msm recognition.

I quoted another article on another thread,
blah blah "post-truth" media, blah blah - this article (pre 11/9) https://theawl.com/when-truth-falls-apart-b4667d39575b blah blah blah
but sunder nailed it
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
"Post-truth politics" translates as 'I don't understand why my side is losing, when we are cleverer, to stupid people I don't like"

If that were the case wouldn't the term have found wide usage when Bush won, when Cameron won, etc.

Wouldn't you agree that Trump's brazen lying during the campaign is unprecedented in modern historical memory, especially when considering the fact that it doesn't seem to cost him politically?

To a much lesser degree, Leave also clearly lied during the referendum and it was similarly rewarded politically.
 

Leo

Well-known member
i blame reality tv.

i'm being facetious but it could be a factor, here in the states anyway. bored senseless people plopped in front of their television sets every night blankly staring at episodes of "reality" filled with conflict and mock outrage that are actually anything but real life. viewers can't tell the difference after awhile, TV and politics merge into a dull blur of entertainment. trump's outrageous statements on the campaign trail compete for attention not with that of his opponent but with last night's episode of the kardashians or "big brother". politics becomes "american idol" and the masses vote for what "feels" right.

actually, i have no fucking idea.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
"Post Truth" politics IMO means: a politician/political spectrum claims something despite being disproven, keeps claiming those unfactual things even more afterwards. Voters/Supporters of course believe those fabricated "facts" simply bc it's not coming from "the system". The effect highly exacerbated by the social media echo chambers. There are millions of people around basically these days who get their world view from those said echo chambers. See also the pre-emptive "explanations" of lost elections - "the system" has rigged it! Usually you find the "Post Truth" types on the political right/populist - but not exclusively.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i blame reality tv.

i'm being facetious but it could be a factor, here in the states anyway. bored senseless people plopped in front of their television sets every night blankly staring at episodes of "reality" filled with conflict and mock outrage that are actually anything but real life. viewers can't tell the difference after awhile, TV and politics merge into a dull blur of entertainment. trump's outrageous statements on the campaign trail compete for attention not with that of his opponent but with last night's episode of the kardashians or "big brother". politics becomes "american idol" and the masses vote for what "feels" right.

actually, i have no fucking idea.

I don't see this as a facetious thing to say at all - I mean, didn't Trump become a household name in the USA as a result of hosting The Apprentice? I'm sure he was well-known before that but I was under the impression it was this that really made him someone that everyone knows by sight. Could be wrong of course.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
I think on balance Facebook hasn't been good for humanity at all.

(Still on it, of course.)

Not at all, and even exacerbated by the fact people switch to their mobile phones to check it out = even more emphasis on "meme"-ism (bc of the small phonescreens etc)

I don't think it's coincidential at all that the rise of those populists/right wingers happens (ed) in accordance with the rise of social media, especially FB.

personal sidenote: I run a small business and use FB for this (I don't have a personal profile) - I don't have a problem with that bc a) it in fact helps my buisness and b) creepy FB is only interested to sell their members to advertisers or sell shit to them directly, so why not use them in the same way.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Today's xkcd:

blame.png
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.

I watched that earlier, Yiannopolous horrendously empty and wilfully stupid as usual. I thought Cathy Newman was exemplary in interviewing him, refusing to be drawn into his absurd word games. Desperately need more interviewers like her, because most on mainstream TV are way too willing to listen respectfully to far-right ideas.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
From David Remnick's piece 'Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency':

“Until recently, religious institutions, academia, and media set out the parameters of acceptable discourse, and it ranged from the unthinkable to the radical to the acceptable to policy,” Simas said. “The continuum has changed. Had Donald Trump said the things he said during the campaign eight years ago—about banning Muslims, about Mexicans, about the disabled, about women—his Republican opponents, faith leaders, academia would have denounced him and there would be no way around those voices. Now, through Facebook and Twitter, you can get around them. There is social permission for this kind of discourse. Plus, through the same social media, you can find people who agree with you, who validate these thoughts and opinions. This creates a whole new permission structure, a sense of social affirmation for what was once thought unthinkable. This is a foundational change.”

The new media ecosystem “means everything is true and nothing is true,” Obama told me later. “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll. And the capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal—that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”

...

What I’m suggesting is that the lens through which people understand politics and politicians is extraordinarily powerful. And Trump understands the new ecosystem, in which facts and truth don’t matter. You attract attention, rouse emotions, and then move on. You can surf those emotions. I’ve said it before, but if I watched Fox I wouldn’t vote for me!”
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I watched that earlier, Yiannopolous horrendously empty and wilfully stupid as usual. I thought Cathy Newman was exemplary in interviewing him, refusing to be drawn into his absurd word games. Desperately need more interviewers like her, because most on mainstream TV are way too willing to listen respectfully to far-right ideas.

she should have asked him about the bald patch

 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I've recently found out that he was actually - pre name change - the annoying attention seeking kid from a couple of years below me at school. Which is a strange mix of mindblowingly weird and totally plausible in retrospect.

Also, a few schoolfriends on Facebook are now trying to remember whether he was one of the people who got put upside-down in the bin in the sixth form common room, and wondering how much influence it might have had on his subsequent path in life if he was.
 
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droid

Well-known member
I've recently found out that he was actually - pre name change - the annoying attention seeking kid from a couple of years below me at school. Which is a strange mix of mindblowingly weird and totally plausible in retrospect.

Also, a few schoolfriends on Facebook are now trying to remember whether he was one of the people who got put upside-down in the bin in the sixth form common room, and wondering how much influence it might have had on his subsequent path in life if he was.

Oh dear god, let this be true - and if it is, let there be photos.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Does this mean he could, in some very indirect way, be Slothrop's fault?

Nice one, mate. No really, way to go there. :mad:
 

sufi

lala
This is a good tweet from an insightful twitter thread by a journalist who's been writing about Philipines.
@adrianchen said:
6/ The "unhinged populist" style is perfectly suited for today's media ecosystem; it plays traditional + social media against each other.
or, as some smart-ass loser put it last week:
"!We took Trump literally but not seriously, his supporters took him seriously not literally!"
 

sufi

lala
This is a pretty interesting take too:

the future said:
In China, that foundation of reality is eroded alongside trust in institutions previously tasked with upholding the truth. Contrary to popular sentiment in the US, Chinese readers don’t blindly trust the state-run media. Rather, they distrust it so much that they don’t trust any form of media, instead putting their faith in what their friends and family tell them. No institution is trusted enough to act as a definitive fact-checker, and so it’s easy for misinformation to proliferate unchecked.
 
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