Toffy’s Divide: Theme 4 — Revisionist History

Years of oppressive storytelling that favored the narrative of one side to the disadvantage of the other is what got me here.

As a Nigerian that moved to the US in 2003, this was very clear to me within months. The way the American media talked about Africa and its history was so strange to me — wars, poverty, corruption, needy children.

Although these stories exist, this unbalanced narrative permeated everyday life.

Coming from Lagos, the most populous cities in Africa, I could only cringe when college classmates asked absurd questions about living in trees. Their ignorance baffled me.

Even though it was easy to google stuff back then, most of these students had been indoctrinated in the school of life, where the people that “held the pen” were the ones that got to drive the narrative — even if their retelling of history is constantly conveniently revised.

Communication specialists

Decades later, I’m reading Jared M. Diamonds’ Guns, germs, and steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and I learned some of the advantages that European colonizers used to dominate their lands of conquest. One of the main advantages that these colonial explorers had was their communication technology.

When the printing press was invented in the 15th century, the communication landscape really changed. Stories could live forever in paper format. Not limited to the lifespan of a human or their ability to pass it down to the next generation.

From systemized letter-writing and documentation of the printing press to the use of telegraph technology in the 19th century, invaders could pass on information on how they captured and colonized lands and people.

This information helped future explorers and “colonizers-in-training” (CITs) refine their exploitation tactics to go to new lands and dominate.

They documented their conquest and told their stories.

Those that had access to the technology could control the narrative at scale.

This technology keeps evolving. From the printing press, to the radio, then the TV, to the internet, and now social media.

The more you control these technologies and access to it, the closer you are in controlling the narrative.

The evidence is in the books, a myriad of them written in favor of the colonizers (the so-called victors), describing the natives as sub-human, undeveloped, primitive, and uncivilized.

When did military oppression and exploitation of native land become a sign of civilization and progress?

That answer depends on whoever is writing the story. The holder of the pen. The owner of the media house.

But that was not really the story. It was revised.

“We are here to help them” was the narrative.

Well, it was more like “They don’t know how to exploit their vast resources. Let’s help them with it. Well, let’s help them help us.”

If you’re not in control of your narrative, someone will control it for you.

If you are not in control of the technology that is used to spread the narrative, someone else will spread it for you.

“The internet of drums”

In James Gleick’s book The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, the first chapter is called “Drums that talk.’’

Initially, the Europeans in Africa thought all the drumming across villages were merely primitive rituals.

It only became clear afterwards that the drums were used to communicate important details about happenings, events, announcements, and celebrations across villages and towns.

The drum strikes and nuanced intonations traveled as sound waves, carrying pockets of information that connected a network of villages.

The drums were the predecessors to the mobile phone, forming a network of drums that served as the rhythmic sound tissue connecting towns.

This was an advance in communication technology that was new to foreigners that still had to rely on horses and other animals to convey information over long distances.

How was this communication technology revised to simply animalistic dancing and chanting?

It depends on who you ask. It depends on who wrote the story and revised it.

History revisers

This revision of history continues today because it gives the people that tell the story more leverage.

There are people out there that dispute the Atlantic slave trade or the Holocaust. Actively stating that it never happened.

The previous colonial powers that reframe their militaristic domination of people and their land into a narrative of religious absolution.

“We were kindly bringing them into the light to save them from an eternity of damnation.” They say.

Politicians, leaders, business owners use this same tactic now — remixing, revising, and deleting what happened to consolidate and justify their position.

Unfortunately, disempowering those they are telling the story for (not with).

The revisionist history playbook is getting easier with technology. Books, pictures, and even videos can now be changed to blur out the truth. Heard about Deep Fakes?

The rate at which content can be created and distributed shows that as we continue to build new technologies, revisionist history can happen at a scale that we have not seen in our lifetime.

Revisionist History in Toffy’s Divide

This is what I examined in Toffy’s Divide.

With the largest corporation in charge of the narrative in the divided J City, there was almost no way out for the individual to control their narrative.

This was taken a step further with new technology being developed that “deletes new thoughts” not allowing any new unwanted stories to be told.

Imagine that.

A world, where not only is history revised, but the present is also edited or muted.

Will you be able to tell if something is happening or not? Will we be able to separate reality from false narrative? The truth from the blatant lie?

A hopeful tomorrow?

We can be hopeful that as we continue to advance in communication technology, we will also get distributed access to the tools to create and tell our stories.

Where people are empowered to control their own narrative in an honest and authentic way.

We can become empowered storytellers because we will have access to the tools that allow us to tell our present and document our history. So that these diverse stories inspire people to want to tell their own stories too, bridging the narrative divide — leaving no history to be revised.

These are the hopes we have for the Toffy’s Domes NFT Project

Be a part of the storytelling movement. Get your own Toffy’s Domes Token here!