The problem is not fake news, but fake society !

helamia (51)in #society • 7 years ago

Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese against the hysterical society of social networks: every detail becomes epochal events. "It does not seem to me that Facebook, Twitter or blogosphere have spawned memorable writers. I think what Marshal McLuhan said ... "

"Sometimes it would be better to keep silent. " One such thing is the principle of the written word, the man clothed in white, sitting next to a white panao, with the keyboard consisting only of white tulips.

The only exclusion with the single-coat of his life, Tom Wolfe lets the ancien régime collar, broad as a picnic (it has nothing to do with those anorexia of hipsters) and terribly blue, with an ellipse of white.

The social network wind does not apace, perhaps for the past 85 years, perhaps because it is accompanied by Umberto Eco's syndrome ("It's a place where idiot crowds have the right to speak"). But also from an ancestral preoccupation: the network has created a hysterical society, which no longer stops reflecting, obsessed with the fear of silence. And that instead of reasoning "hears as he speaks".

Had social networks existed during the Cold War, the world's third world conflict would have exploded at least twice: between the United States of the Soviet Union of Missile of Kuvelle in 1062 and between the United States and the Islamic world (at that time protected by the Soviet Union) during the abduction of the Achille Lauro cruiser in 1985.

With Moscow's full-fledged rockets approaching the island of Castro during the embargo, let's imagine a world full of "twitter", Facebook-hysterical hype of military wickedness, Instagram nuclear test photos scattered by ordinary Russian spy and social strata committed to face, which, compared to today's fascism-anti-fascism electoral diabolism, would look like a toy toy.

And as if a chance not to press the red button would have been standing, it would be fired 23 years later in the finished cruiser in the hands of Palestinian terrorists, as the last selfie of the crypts in kefiah with Leon Klinghoffer or the surreal reportage of a fanatical tourist after citizen journalism (practically a cellphone worker improvised Peter Arnett), a share of 12 million Americans would push Ronald Reagan to detonate Ferris.

It's syndrome for like. It is the risk of the flock, the multi-polar effect to sleep at night in a residential neighborhood. At the media level there is no balance, there is no more undercurrent grace. The problem is not determined by fake news, but by fake society, which, from boredom, caters to each other by emphasizing every detail and transforming up to a climatic marginality into epochal events.

Behind the urgency to testify, people hide only their anxiety for social presentation. Today even for 5 centimeters of snow in Rome, it did not happen in the past.

Here comes Tom Wolfe, who on November 22, 1963, 13:30, one hour after John Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, was sent by the Herald Tribune newspaper to stroll through Manhattan to show the desperation of America hit the heart.

The novelist of New Journalism, now a loving webmaster, tells story-telling, entered a bar and was faced with a peer-minded colleague and just as famous for the same motif: Gay Talese. Recalling that anecdote in an interview for the Spanish daily "El Pais", he continues: "I asked if he agreed to take the same taxi and share the expenses. We stayed 4 or 5 hours together. We went to Chinatown, Little Italy, Wall Street, on Upper West Side, Broadway, and we did not see anything worthy of showing. No one jumped out of the window, there was no tomorrow to weep at the knee on the asphalt. Across the street there was an absolute normality. We were greeted. "

It would be unimaginable today and not because journalists - even though we can not even tie their shoes to those two giants - are weak in arguments, but because we will overcome the right-hand left by thousands of improvised journalists who, will show an event, emotionally deform it by screaming. Because today the crowd's screaming is the world's soundtrack.

Happiness is even more paradoxical. Gay Talese continues: "When I returned to the newspaper I told my editor that I would have liked to write about the lack of emotion of people in the face of such a news. He replied that I should forget. The next day, the first thing I just did was raise the purchase of the "Herald Tribune" to read what Tom had written. I searched in the newspaper from start to finish, but I found nothing. There was no trace of our walk around town a day earlier.

So the presumed giants of New Journalism had been tasked with writing about an important fact like Kennedy's killing and neither of them had been able to publish the reportage. The other evening, as I darko with him, we have remembered this story. Two old "follower", we remembered the times when we were full of energies since they handed over their weapons-related items to Dallas and saw them being rejected. " Both articles have finally seen the publication's light in Life Books on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the historic killing.

That Manhattan dignified silence, that continuation of the long river flow was not considered news. In fact it was the most original, the most powerful news. It was the truth. Just because there were no "tweaks" filled with poison, there was not Jackie Kennedy's photogallery Instagram with the bloody jacket. It was not even the selfie of the police officer with Lee Oswald's newly arrested.

There was no necessary fuel of collective anxiety, "#metoo" at all costs. The short century had many faults, but not the one to put into hysteria and make it planetary, believing it was an indispensable novatorism.

Faced with sublime anecdotes and against "timid curtains" of today's information, Tom Wolfe has a coherent mindset with his life slogan "I like to enjoy skiing," which has nothing to do with sitting on the couch. "It does not seem to me that Facebook, Twitter or blogosphere have spawned memorable writers. Although in these short formats it's really hard to make innovation. I think what Marshal McLuhan said in 1968: "The minds of a whole generation are deformed by television, transforming the public into a tribe that only believes in what is whispered in the ear." This is infinitely more real now, where anyone can write anything without the quality control of someone. I have no idea how it will end, but I know that the power of the pen has shrunk a lot. " It remains irresistible, despite the illusion of the crowd, power and so on.