The Rage In The Machine
“The way to win an information war is not to shy away from conflict online, but to lean into it.”
The above quote jumped out at me in this short read from Buzzfeed. It serves as a snapshot of our new and always evolving reality.
However unhinged he may be, Alex Jones has branded his ‘news’ platform InfoWars for the age we now find ourselves in. These are indeed the Info Wars. And they’re not just playing out across nation states, but within our society, our communities and even our families. This isn’t a fight over which country or ideology is right; it’s a fight over which reality is the most real.
In a world where both sides think the news that appeals to their confirmation bias is the only reality, the real becomes fake, and the fake becomes real.
Just take a look at the comments of an overtly political CNN post on Facebook. A glimpse into that ‘fever swamp’ never ceases to shock me. Is it real? Are they Bots? Russians? Alt-Right trolls? Or just seriously unhinged Americans. It’s no doubt a mix of all four, and then some.
But, this isn’t unique to the right.
For every RWNJ pulling things rightward, there is an SJW insisting we go further to the left. There have been the university protests shutting down academics (and no that doesn’t include Milo Yiannopoulos) talking about ideas or research perceived too dangerous to even be discussed.
And the web is awash with misdirected rage such as this Vice piece titled “Hoop Earrings Are My Culture, Not Your Trend”. A ludicrous take that white women shouldn’t wear hooped earrings because, “Hoops are worn by minorities as symbols of resistance, and strength”.
Hooped earrings have been worn by cultures across millennia (even pirates), and will no doubt continue to do so. It was so beyond satire that I had to double check that it wasn’t.
In the 20th century we had two opposing ideological viewpoints get pushed so far to the limit that they became mirrors of each other. And so goes identity politics, being forced to the extremes of right and left at an increasing velocity.
All fuelled by internet rage.
This isn’t something as passive as ‘filter bubbles’. The internet and our online platforms are driving us further away from each other and into more and more conflict.
The algorithms reward engagement, and ginning up conflict is the most effective way to get that juice. It’s the antics of edgelords out there on the extremes that hoover up that engagement, pushing us further and further out to the edges.
Just as you don’t get the same laughs from telling the same joke twice, the next guy has to take things even further to get their hit from the attention economy. And so on. And so on.
Follow this to its logical conclusion and the centre can’t hold. And it’s not. It’s too beige or boring compared to the next outrage to pop-up in your feed.
If Silicon Valley has the answer, they’re holding their cards way too close to their chest. The titans that we had up on pedestals only a few years ago come across as lame ducks in all this. Powerless to rein in their Frankensteins.
The Mueller indictment of 13 Russians confirmed what many of us already knew. That the Russians not only hacked Hillary’s emails. They had hacked US democracy and fomented division, by using Facebook’s ad tools precisely how they’ve been telling marketers to use them.
Zuck’s disappointing response (decreasing news items in the newsfeed and featuring more baby pics) won’t fix this. And Twitter are still (after all these years) like a rabbit in the headlights with their issues.
We are now beyond the point of no return.
This is what happens when we’re all connected.
And as a communications strategist, I have been obsessing over where all this is taking us.
But then this week happens.
Feeling cornered by all the positive press the Parkland students have been receiving, the ProTump media and Infowars gang have taken their #Pizzagate level conspiracy attacks to the families and friends and victims. Though, they can’t quite decide if their targets are manipulative state actors or mere manipulated dupes.
But the real kicker is that the kids are fighting back, by leaning into the conflict and staring down their accusers. Their weapons are emojis, sarcasm, mockery and even dated text speak. They are fearless and are harnessing their grief, internet skills and their networks to channel their rage towards changing things for the better.
These kids already have enough on their shoulders, but maybe they can school us on more than gun control. Maybe they hold the secret on how to jump tracks from our current trajectory. Maybe they can show us how we can make this hot mess of connectivity and rage coalesce into something better.
Because if we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re headed.
Matt Kendall is Founder and Director of Fromm, a brand accelerator based in Sydney and Byron Bay. Matt is obsessed with the future of work, a future that is decentralised, distributed, collaborative and, therefore, a whole lot more human.
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