It’s only a matter of time
Charlie Warzel is feaking out over the “depravity and nihilism” of MAGA’s hurricane lies:
Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.
This is nothing new. For the right, truth is no longer an American value. It hasn’t been for decades. MAGA types know spreading propaganda and lies is wrong and they don’t care. They simply have more channels for spreading it, and they’ve done so with glee since the days of pass-it-on emails.
It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not. Such was the case last week, when Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. “I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”
Kremer wasn’t alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people “acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it’s real on some deeper level”—proof, Molloy noted, that we’re “living in the post-reality.” The technology writer Jason Koebler argued that we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging, with AI-generated images being used to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.
Truthiness captured the ethos back in 2005. But its accelerant is the creation of infotainment platforms
… that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world …
So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
There’s little new about this phenomenon since the days when my father forwarded conservative pass-it-on spam with as many as 75 non-blind-copied addresses attached from multiple forwards. What’s changed is the reach of the lies. Their purpose is the same as 20 years ago:
Pass-it-on spams don’t ask people to write their congressman or senator. They don’t ask people to get involved in or contribute to a political campaign. Or even to make a simple phone call. No. Once you’ve had your daily dose of in-box outrage, conservative reader, all these propaganda pieces ask is that you “pass it on” to everyone you know. So now that you’re good and angry — and if you’re a Real American™ — you’ll share it with all your friends so they’ll get and stay angry too.
Warzel concludes:
What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”
Burning witches didn’t stop people from experiencing misfortune or illness, but that’s where this is headed. The explanation for the behavior is as I’ve written before (in fact, over 30 years before). The New York Times is finally on the same page:
“It helps them to regain some measure of control and sense of order at a time when everything feels quite bleak and hopeless,” said Jennie King, who oversees climate disinformation research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that studies online platforms.
The intensity of Helene and Milton’s one-two punch has been difficult to fathom. For many, it has been easier to blame human villains.
Having a diabolical someone to blame is more comfort than admitting shit happens.
Welcome to Salem.