The rug has been pulled out from under our feet. We can, no longer, agree on anything at all. Ask anyone about anything at all and you’ll be confronted with wildly different answers.Frederick’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Let's not overlook the multiplier affecting 'public opinion', giving any conspiracy theories an extra boost: the social media where the number of 'likes' define which 'hot theory' gets spewed into more and more people's timeline ('hashtag xyzzy ...) and thus, just as in the olden days, people 'believe' because 'it was in the papers', then they 'believe' because 'it was on the radio', then because 'it was on telly'.
Nowadays, where proper journalists are as rare as hen's teeth, anything on social media, especially if they're "Top Hashtag", are 'news' and turned into 'news reports'.
And so those theories proliferate because 'everybody says so' while at the same time fewer people use yon grey matter between their ears and think for themselves: just a bit of common sense needed, no PhD required ...
Picking up on your last point, wrt ‘Whereas once a video, a photo or a document was incontrovertible evidence’—was that ever really the case? Photographs were manipulated almost from the invention of photography—the Cottingley Fairies of 1917 was one early example (the ‘fairies’, clearly two-dimensional, fooled a surprising number of people at the time, even Conan Doyle—even more surprisingly, some still pondered their veracity as late as the 1970s); a better quality example was Stalin’s infamous erasing of people from photographs as they became unpersoned. Videos were little better, ‘real’ footage being frequently staged, e.g. the ‘going over the top’ from 1916’s ‘The Battle of the Somme’—clips from this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaE6SH-_snE) are often used in documentaries and films when illustrating trench warfare, and rarely is the artificiality of the scene remarked (in fairness to both producers and cameramen of the 1916 film, cine-cameras then were too bulky and heavy to take to the front lines to film an actual assault). Another, and prevalent, example is the myth of WW2 German military superiority, which is at least partly due to book publishers and video producers depicting the WW2 German military by utilising the plentiful supply of photos and film produced by… Goebbels’ Propagandaministerium, which took endless pics and footage of Jerry’s few toys and mechanised units, and rarely recorded the remainder of the Heer, the vast majority of which was WW1-tier, drawn by horse or marching on foot (short, informal video making this point here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWgmrb9yeg).
That great action shot that left you envious of the photographer’s skill? He took a couple dozen photographs of that moment, picked the best one and even then had to crop it to get the right framing.
Iconic photos such as St Paul’s emerging from the smoke of the Blitz and the milkman delivering his milk amidst the rubble—the former was retouched and the (first published) DM version was cropped as well, while the latter was actually the photographer’s assistant. (Still, neither was a complete lie: the bombs were falling but missing St Paul’s; the milkman was delivering milk but they borrowed his jacket and a crate rather than using him.)
The entire medium of cinematic film is based on a lie of sorts: ‘persistence of vision’, the optical illusion where a series of still images moving at the correct speed (a frame rate of around 24 fps) appears to the eye as a smoothly moving image.
(Biggest lie there ever was is the notion that ‘the camera never lies’.)
Of course, one big change is, whereas once photo and video manipulation required both skill and access to some serious and expensive kit, now it requires only access to a website, but this is not entirely new: the advent of social media sees many dipsticks posting clips claiming to show some awful/awesome event only for the footage to transpire to be entirely unrelated, from years previously, and/or from a different country.
And, of course, the other big change, as you describe, is that we ‘have lost faith with [our] institutions’—deservedly: when viewing the apparently hostile actions by governments toward their indigenous populations, the only debate is, does their behaviour stem from deliberate malice or simply incompetence and/or cowardice? In contrast, the governments of, say, FDR and Chamberlain, for all their faults, could not be said (outside of lunatic circles) to have acted from malice: mistaken they might have been but they were doing their best for their nations and peoples.
Still, one shouldn’t blame governments entirely, as large numbers of ordinary people are—to be brutally frank—dumb s**ts(*). The freer people are, the more some whine about the evils of slavery while demanding ever more laws to shackle us and taxes to burden us; the less racism there is, the more some whine about the evils of racism while demanding ever more racially-based laws and regulations privileging one race at another’s expense; and the more and easier found *information* is, the more it is ignored and unsought.
"Normal people" still know the history of this island. They know the truth of it - both the good and the bad. They simply watch the fabricated story being told, often by newcomers, with a curl of the lip. Sadly, once we normal people have gone, the current children will not know this sceptred isle for what it once was.
Frederick shows the sickening noise of shouting and counter-opposition to almost every aspect of our lives. One has to step back, and filter the shouting.
The bigger events then come into focus - such as Fujitsu being pre-selected for a national ID scheme which will apply - if it gets off the ground - at bars and super markets. A corrupt useless corp scraping (ie, trawling) data from millions of people after the Horizon affair. A prime example of bad news buried in daily froth.
Let's not overlook the multiplier affecting 'public opinion', giving any conspiracy theories an extra boost: the social media where the number of 'likes' define which 'hot theory' gets spewed into more and more people's timeline ('hashtag xyzzy ...) and thus, just as in the olden days, people 'believe' because 'it was in the papers', then they 'believe' because 'it was on the radio', then because 'it was on telly'.
Nowadays, where proper journalists are as rare as hen's teeth, anything on social media, especially if they're "Top Hashtag", are 'news' and turned into 'news reports'.
And so those theories proliferate because 'everybody says so' while at the same time fewer people use yon grey matter between their ears and think for themselves: just a bit of common sense needed, no PhD required ...
How do we know Kate Middleton actually exists?
She could be a creation of AI.
OK, I'm joking, but I suspect the day that I might not be isn't far off.
Picking up on your last point, wrt ‘Whereas once a video, a photo or a document was incontrovertible evidence’—was that ever really the case? Photographs were manipulated almost from the invention of photography—the Cottingley Fairies of 1917 was one early example (the ‘fairies’, clearly two-dimensional, fooled a surprising number of people at the time, even Conan Doyle—even more surprisingly, some still pondered their veracity as late as the 1970s); a better quality example was Stalin’s infamous erasing of people from photographs as they became unpersoned. Videos were little better, ‘real’ footage being frequently staged, e.g. the ‘going over the top’ from 1916’s ‘The Battle of the Somme’—clips from this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaE6SH-_snE) are often used in documentaries and films when illustrating trench warfare, and rarely is the artificiality of the scene remarked (in fairness to both producers and cameramen of the 1916 film, cine-cameras then were too bulky and heavy to take to the front lines to film an actual assault). Another, and prevalent, example is the myth of WW2 German military superiority, which is at least partly due to book publishers and video producers depicting the WW2 German military by utilising the plentiful supply of photos and film produced by… Goebbels’ Propagandaministerium, which took endless pics and footage of Jerry’s few toys and mechanised units, and rarely recorded the remainder of the Heer, the vast majority of which was WW1-tier, drawn by horse or marching on foot (short, informal video making this point here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwWgmrb9yeg).
That great action shot that left you envious of the photographer’s skill? He took a couple dozen photographs of that moment, picked the best one and even then had to crop it to get the right framing.
Iconic photos such as St Paul’s emerging from the smoke of the Blitz and the milkman delivering his milk amidst the rubble—the former was retouched and the (first published) DM version was cropped as well, while the latter was actually the photographer’s assistant. (Still, neither was a complete lie: the bombs were falling but missing St Paul’s; the milkman was delivering milk but they borrowed his jacket and a crate rather than using him.)
The entire medium of cinematic film is based on a lie of sorts: ‘persistence of vision’, the optical illusion where a series of still images moving at the correct speed (a frame rate of around 24 fps) appears to the eye as a smoothly moving image.
(Biggest lie there ever was is the notion that ‘the camera never lies’.)
Of course, one big change is, whereas once photo and video manipulation required both skill and access to some serious and expensive kit, now it requires only access to a website, but this is not entirely new: the advent of social media sees many dipsticks posting clips claiming to show some awful/awesome event only for the footage to transpire to be entirely unrelated, from years previously, and/or from a different country.
And, of course, the other big change, as you describe, is that we ‘have lost faith with [our] institutions’—deservedly: when viewing the apparently hostile actions by governments toward their indigenous populations, the only debate is, does their behaviour stem from deliberate malice or simply incompetence and/or cowardice? In contrast, the governments of, say, FDR and Chamberlain, for all their faults, could not be said (outside of lunatic circles) to have acted from malice: mistaken they might have been but they were doing their best for their nations and peoples.
Still, one shouldn’t blame governments entirely, as large numbers of ordinary people are—to be brutally frank—dumb s**ts(*). The freer people are, the more some whine about the evils of slavery while demanding ever more laws to shackle us and taxes to burden us; the less racism there is, the more some whine about the evils of racism while demanding ever more racially-based laws and regulations privileging one race at another’s expense; and the more and easier found *information* is, the more it is ignored and unsought.
(* Truth be told, we’re all dumb as s**t, just in different spheres: you wouldn’t ask Einstein for sartorial advice; and Mozart was a musical genius yet not the most desirable of acquaintances, and another musical genius, Beethoven, had a sense of humour ranging from the puerile to the utterly obscure (https://www.wrti.org/arts-desk/2021-03-23/enjoying-beethovens-humor-in-his-fourth-symphony-with-conductor-nathalie-stutzmann).)
"Normal people" still know the history of this island. They know the truth of it - both the good and the bad. They simply watch the fabricated story being told, often by newcomers, with a curl of the lip. Sadly, once we normal people have gone, the current children will not know this sceptred isle for what it once was.
Frederick shows the sickening noise of shouting and counter-opposition to almost every aspect of our lives. One has to step back, and filter the shouting.
The bigger events then come into focus - such as Fujitsu being pre-selected for a national ID scheme which will apply - if it gets off the ground - at bars and super markets. A corrupt useless corp scraping (ie, trawling) data from millions of people after the Horizon affair. A prime example of bad news buried in daily froth.