⛪ Truth
Before the Internet, nobody knew how old Sean Connery was. You’d read his age in a magazine, but the journalist hadn’t seen his birth certificate, they were just saying what someone else told them. In 1999 Generation X would argue in the pub about things nobody knew for sure. Like whether there really were aliens at Area 51, whether ghosts existed or spontaneous human combustion was a thing. Nobody really cared either. True believers were mentally unwell, or thought they knew better. Maybe their parents bought an encyclopaedia set for two grand from a door to door salesman. The final hours of the pre-truth era is one of some Dude saying “Yeah? Well, you know, that’s just like uh, your opinion, man.”
Truth with a capital T emerged along with the global network. After the Internet, Connery was born in Edinburgh on a damp and breezy Monday evening, three weeks after another wash-out bank holiday. We know this for a fact, and it probably is. But the existence of facts normalizes the possibility of Truth, and with that people believe much more through osmosis.
For example, Jimmy Wales unironically believes Wikipedia to be without bias. This is typical of believers in Truth, as Truth is a double-edged sword without a handle; Truthers are immune to conspiracy theories but vulnerable to conspiracies. So Rounders are BTFO by thinking flat-earthers actually exist, and aren’t just a joke at their expense. I don’t know whether the press are in on the joke, but their business is in selling stories to the gullible, so ‘re not one for the trophy cabinet.
In 2016, Trump’s incredible commitment to tradition ushered in the post-truth era, a brazen Falseness that outraged millennials. Pre-truthers shrugged, he was just doing what everyone else had during pre-truth, and revealed the age of Truth to be more bullshit. Doing it with so little skill that everyone could see it was a clue, but pre-truthers can tell when a politician is lying anyway; their lips move. If later generations are given chance to adjust, they would surely become wise to this too. But the next epistemology is inbound and this is not looking very likely.
Because it’s personal truths that come next. Fractals of mass-manufactured deceit. Individualized, coherent and divisive lies delivered by the power of machine learning.
How convenient these truths are, and to whom, will seal the True fate of the world. Unable to see, we’ll just have to wait.