Misinformation, propaganda and flooding the zone

The pace of misinformation and propaganda is picking up so much, it’s like flooding the zone with so much nonsense that even those with the best of intentions and pretty strong radars can’t keep up.

Imagine a game of Tetris. Early on, the blocks are falling slowly, and it’s relatively easy to strategically place the blocks. Maybe you make a mistake or two, but overall, it’s under control.

As they start to fall faster, for awhile, if you’re well-practiced and strategic, you can still keep up.

Eventually, though, they’re falling so fast and even the most experienced player can’t match the pace.

This is where we are with misinformation.

And yet, I often wonder how people who are smart and educated and really considering what they’re hearing/reading/seeing fall for junk science or wild headlines.

Part of it is repetition, if you hear something over and over, you’re more apt to begin to believe it.

Part of it is there are deliberate efforts to confuse and mislead.

Often it’s mixed with some kernel of truth, or the person/group has done enough groundwork to persuade you they are trustworthy. Perhaps they started out by sharing factual news. This is seen often with both bots and real people. Here’s a short reader on how to spot bots.

Some of it is people who want to sow misinformation are purposely throwing content out there that is false, or emphasizing specific content so our perceptions are off. A great example is media reports that emphasize crime, particularly violent and random crimes, with an uptick on such reports ahead of elections. People end up being swayed by the perception of crime and not the data. After the midterm elections in 2022 in the U.S., Fox News coverage of crime dropped by half. Even those of us who know better can fall for it. People in Barcelona (and more broadly in Spain), constantly talk about crime and insecurity in Barcelona. While there is a legitimate problem with pickpocketing in particular, and crime rates overall may be higher than many other parts of Spain, they are orders of magnitude lower than any place in the United States! So as someone who moved to Spain from NYC, I should feel dramatically safer in Barcelona, based on data and facts.

One can end up reading an article/newsletter, watching a video or listening to a podcast that has next to no basis in reality. Yet – especially with podcasts, I find – there’s so much fluff and talking in circles on the average grifter garbage. Sometimes you’ll listen to the discussion of a problem, that’s legitimately a problem – increasing obesity rates, younger people getting cancer, high rates of people saying they are lonely or have no friends, etc etc – and you listen and find yourself nodding at the reality of the problem. Then they go in the same tone to put forth the alleged cause and solution, with no evidence whatsoever. But there’s enough pseudoscience there to make you doubt yourself, maybe just for a second. Or enough people start to spout the nonsense that you wonder if you’re wrong.

Don’t let yourself be gaslit. The fact that most people in Germany went along with the Nazis didn’t make it right. The fact that most people supported slavery at one point didn’t make it right. “Wokeness” didn’t lead to the L.A. fires.

Sometimes people are so desperate to find someone to blame or to believe in an easier solution than reality that they’ll fall for anything. If the massive and unprecedented destruction of the ongoing L.A. fires, the recent flash flooding from the DANA in Valencia, Spain, and the hurricane damage around Asheville, North Carolina are the result of climate change, there’s no easy solution. Not to say there aren’t specific measures in each place that couldn’t be improved to reduce impact in a future similar situation, but the storm itself can’t be avoided. If, on the other hand, the damage is almost all due to “wokeness” (give me a break, babe), then we just need to change a few policies and we can avoid this.

I’ve been increasingly worried about misinformation over the last few years. This isn’t particularly surprising, given I am a former journalist. Even in college, where I double majored in Government and International Studies, and Spanish, with a concentration in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy, I remember taking a course that focused on the use of propaganda in politics and political campaigns. Misinformation isn’t new, purposeful or not.

Looking at century-old newspaper covers on the wall at my favorite restaurant in Barcelona, El Xampanyet, I find myself both bemused and startled at some of the ads for cures and treatments that we know today are utter nonsense or even harmful. Some were probably promoted with bad intentions, but others not.

The speed at which the misinformation is coming at us now is new, though. Similar to how fires have long been a danger in southern California when the Santa Ana winds were blowing, there’s always been disinformation. But throw in a drought and 90 mph winds (and umpteen other factors), and these fires became exponentially more severe. Throw in social media, the world being very online, political and media leaders being among the worst at spreading disinformation; now we’re all playing Tetris level 21 with 90mph embers coming at us.