Made Up News is Objectively Way Better Than Real News
Hear me out.
As proud citizens of Post-Truth Society, we have to start making some decisions. One of those is whether we are content with the fact that the main purpose of all our major media is not to inform us about what’s happening, as much as to purposely manufacture random bullcrap stories that will effectively derail us from realizing what’s happening.
When they gave us the Information Age, you see, they never actually said the information would be accurate. We really should have read the fine print.
This all might sound a little vague and aggrandizing, so let’s dig up some particulars to illustrate what I mean.
If you are not active on social media, you may have not heard of the horrific fate of Javion Magee. A young black truck driver drove into North Carolina’s Vance County and never got to leave - his body was found leaning against a tree, with a length of rope he had bought himself the previous day at the local Walmart wrapped around his broken neck in what the local sheriff was quick to describe to the local media as ‘Not A Lynching’.
The investigation seems to be spinning its wheels and keeps throwing hopeful glances towards the ruling of ‘suicide’, which the circumstances really don’t seem to support. The police have, in perfectly reasonable and non-suspicious fashion, refused the family’s requests to send pictures of the victim or let his mother ID him.
Major media outlets seem to have not made much of this story. They didn’t find it inspiring. If it wasn’t for Instagram I doubt I would have ever heard of it.
I have heard far too much, on the other hand, about Haitian immigrants supposedly eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
This just in!! Developing!! Insight and analysis!! Vance doubles down! Allegations denied! Breaking! Today’s top stories! Haitians under attack because of false rumors! Woman who started rumor sorry! Trump spends half the presidential debate going back to the pet eating! Scandal! Shock! What is the truth of it? Latest angle!! New insights!! Erika Lee, who started the entire frenzy by posting on Facebook that her neighbors’ cat had gone missing, says ‘she is not racist.’
Somebody is, though.
Are we, my friend, really ok with the state of affairs where a young man loses his life in extremely suspicious circumstances and raises barely a whimper of media coverage, while a woman….. *checks notes* ….. posts on Facebook about a neighbor’s missing cat, and this is somehow whipped up into an international media frenzy with an absolute whirlwind of coverage from all possible angles?
Are we ok?
A lost pet is a family tragedy, to be sure. Back when we owned cats I would have undoubtedly felt distraught if one of them had gone missing. But anyone who has seen a cat knows cats go missing. Your neighborhood probably has a few ‘missing cat, please call if you see Mr. Whiskers, reward offered’ posters taped to streetlights or utility poles. While we all feel for Mr. Whiskers, I think we can agree his fate was probably not directed by nefarious plots. Mr. Whiskers might pop up tomorrow, back from a happy hunt with one ear bent and his fur all askew. Mr. Whiskers might have snuck out the window and ended up under a passing car, or came across some rat poison. Mr. Whiskers may have rehomed himself with a neighboring family who gives better treats. Honestly I am having trouble caring.
People write unhinged Facebook posts all the time.
What the hell made this particular one worthy of international media attention?
What made the fate of Mr. Whiskers so captivating to a nation that didn’t stop for a second to ask about the fate of Javion Magee?
The entire Haitian community in Ohio and beyond is reeling from this psychotic media coverage of a literally non-existent, ludicrous and implausible event, with people being attacked or threatened by violence. They are having to make statements such as ‘we do not eat people’s pets’. Can you imagine having to defend yourself from such a claim? Imagine yourself having to stand up, as a regular human being with a life and a family and a job in a community you thought you were integrating into, and having to clarify to your neighbors and coworkers that you did not, in fact, eat Mr. Whiskers.
Take a moment, envision it. Do you feel that? The primordial unease?
My next-door neighbors happen to be Haitian. They are a lovely old couple and they often take care of their two adorable grandkids. The little girl loves music so they bought her a small synthesizer and she loves playing it, they always apologize for the noise and I always say it’s not noise, she plays beautifully, she’s clearly gifted at improv. The Monsieur has difficulty walking so he leans on his cane but he takes a slow stroll around our block every day without fail. We hold doors for each other and chat about things in passing - the weather, the rent increases, bits of news.
We have no cat, but we have during our stay in this apartment had an adorable hamster, and a number of extremely tiny aquarium fish. The hamster passed away of natural causes, while the fish are largely still with us. Unharmed.
If you start paying attention, you can find examples like these in the media every single day. Absolute non-events turned into flurries of increasingly unhinged press reports, while deeply sinister events are either completely skipped as unimportant, unsubstantiated (as opposed to the FACEBOOK POST ABOUT A MISSING CAT Jesus frikkin H. Christ on a pogo stick!!), or inconvenient, and let to either sink into the ether like quiet pebbles or, if they must be reported on, muted and word-saladed into unrecognizability.
That’s how you get articles titled ‘Hundreds of Hezbollah Pagers Explode Across Lebanon’. Or ‘Hezbollah Members Among Nine Dead as Exploding Pagers Wound 2750 in Lebanon’. Faulty manufacturing, improper use, spontaneous self-combustion?
…Israeli terrorist attack?
………US-backed Israeli terrorist attack?
I guess we’ll never know. It’s one of life’s little mysteries. Just like why hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are waking up dead and dismembered. How can we know? There is no evidence! It would be irresponsible to report on an uncorroborated story, after all. If only Erika Lee from Springfield, Ohio had posted something on her Facebook about that.
Speaking of things that draw zero media attention, let’s talk about the reported number of civilian casualties in Gaza, Palestine. Do you remember the first time we heard the number ‘40,000’ mentioned in the media? I think it must have been back in February, or thereabouts. Then the authority who was painstakingly trying to record and confirm the identities of those victims whose bodies had been brought to the hospitals got disbanded through utter devastation of, well, everything - and the number hasn’t moved since.
Seemingly it makes perfect sense to all the greatest reporters of the most widely read publications in the western world that through all the reported school bombings, mosque bombings, refugee camp bombings, hospital bombings, mass grave discoveries, massive bombs turning people into loose matter that can only be transported in plastic bags, more massive bombs leaving behind only 9 meter deep craters with not even scraps of people left, torture prison camps, daily kidnappings, settler attacks, West Bank home burnings, and every other manner of atrocity that goes studiously ignored by the western press during the last 7-8 months, the number of casualties just…… isn’t changing.
What can we do? There is simply no one there who can give us an updated estimate to express our doubts at. It would be highly irresponsible to start reporting numbers willy-nilly through guesswork and other practices unbecoming of serious reporters. After all, we have a reputation to uphold.
If only Erika Lee would post something on her Facebook about it. It would be the confirmation we so badly need.
So, yeah.
Real stories of real suffering happening to real people are buried under mountains of maliciously drafted gobbledygook that is hyped into the stratosphere in spite of being so stupid you can feel it actively withering your frontal lobe. That soft hiss you hear is your braincells committing suicide so they don’t have to read another take on why the Woke Olympics wanted to ‘let men beat up women’ while multiple genocides are being swept under the World’s Biggest Rug in real time.
I remember the massive earthquake hitting Haiti in 2010, and my British boss walking into our office saying ‘Well today will be a great day to bury some bad news.’
He went on to explain how his old friend who worked for Downing Street has told him of this standard practice that governments tend to have - when you have some dirty confessions, embarrassing mishaps, harmful plans, or otherwise unpalatable information which you realize you must release to the public somehow, but would really rather not put into the spotlight, you wait for some sort of massive news-flooding event to happen, and you use the deluge of stories about that to bury all your gross little news-turds. You stick them onto the back pages into small nondescript stories and hope nobody pays too much attention.
Famed American innovation has clearly struck again, as they have realized it’s far more effective to just whip up your own home-made ridiculously overblown media-swamping stories, and use those to bury all the news you don’t want noticed.
After all, we still haven’t mastered earthquake-causing technology, so this technique is way more reliable.
All it requires is a population that shuns critical thought.
Wow. You - as they like to say in the media - stuck the landing with this. You've so eloquently described it all. Thank you for writing this.
This was wonderful to read. I would normally point out one passage or phrase that I thought really stuck with me…but the whole thing was beautifully written and every word of it the truth.