Slashdot Mirror
The Internet's New Alternate Reality
Hugh Pickens writes "Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times that when President Obama released his long form birth certificate last week, one of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday was the rapidity and ease with which so many leading birthers rejected the evidence he presented. 'Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was — for all intents and purposes — dropped,' writes Rutten. 'Today, the growth of the Internet has drained the noun "news" of its former authority. If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs.'"
I think the traditional mass media has done plenty to damage their own credibility. Why blame the internet?
Their credibility was an aberration to begin with, and really only came about because of big business got in bed with big government during the 1920s. The syndicates, naturally, wanted to get stories ahead of the smaller papers and came to a cozy agreement with politicians not to say anything too outrageous. The politicians were only too happy to comply, and this pushed the smaller, noisier papers to covering local matters. The syndicates were able to promote themselves as being the voice of authority, the peak of which came with Walter Cronkite.
Of course the idea that a god existing makes anything more meaningful is also pretty funny if you think about it.
What would then be the "reason" for that god existing for example?
In the end there is no meaning other than what you create for yourself. Most find it easier to copy their meanings from others - and the larger a group is, the more convincing their meanings appear..
IOW, religions have always exercised the same sort of alternate-reality support as this story describes as "new" for the Internet Age.
When you immerse yourself in a subculture that believes X, it becomes easy to believe X and hard to be motivated to ask questions that challenge X. It doesn't matter whether your source of authority is FOX News, David Koresh, or the Pope - it works the same in each case, and depends on surrounding yourself with people who suckle at the same tit.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When I was in religious studies, I took a sociology class called "The True Believer" that dealt with this phenomenon. In short, the True Believer exists in religion, politics, in movements and causes of every kind. For the True Believer, his/her cause has surpassed reason and become a matter of faith. Anyone who questions it has become a mere obstacle to test their faith. Any evidence to the contrary is false simple by virtue of that contradiction.
Any attempt to sway a True Believer is pointless. A True Believer can only be swayed by a serious personal crisis or epiphany, a "Road to Damascus" moment that shifts their faith radically. And when they do change, it's usually just to move on an embrace some new cause to be a True Believer in.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.