The century of fake news or how I can be a high energy physicist overnight

We are living in an era where billions of counterfeit news and a little more than thousands of real news are hovering around us. This is not the origin of something new, it is not that 21st century’s technologies made the world entirely phoney, rather as a living being humans have been phoney in a lot of ways across their existence. Cutting off the philosophical discourse and sticking to the existing reality, what makes the fake news a flourishing business, that directs the history of human societies? The arrival of social media platforms and their big data corporations cemented a marbled pathway for fake news – the appetite for data surplus made these corporations to pave this glossy slippery road. In the name of connecting people globally, we are made scapegoats produce an infinite amount of data which gave a big space for everyone in the globe with internet access to manufacture raw material for data machines that decides our fate.

The world of fake news had a different name even before the origin of social medium – gossips or folk tales or false stories but they took years to circulate or to reach other parts of the earth. Today, social media made fake news legitimates and eases their circulation. Out of 30-40% (although I don’t have an exact statistics) of the content that we hear/watch/read, today is fake. Not only the internet world but social media is impacting visual medium in a greater way. The competition to telecast the news bits made visual medium trust every news in social media with legitimate references and the references can be a research institute or a government or an academia or scientific terms etc. A good example would be, the televised news about the recovery of English crown prince Charles from COVID-19 by using Ayurvedic medication, unfortunately, this news was conveyed by the union minister of India who oversees Ayurveda & other traditional medications which made the news genuine. Later, officials of the Prince of Wales declined this claim. Every other WhatsApp forward that we receive has a fake reference to Oxford or Harvard or NASA or CERN. It may be for clapping to honour professionals who work tirelessly during the epidemic or attacking enemies using drones by hiding under the sky or having a magnetic chip in a new denomination bill. It is more like producing fake certificates or signatures in the past – it was too complex for me to produce my parent’s signature in my school reports in the 90s. Today, computers and smart tools made them easier as brushing the teeth every morning.

Before getting into the real world of fake news, it would be helpful to understand the anatomy of references that every fake news holds. Out of 50%, fake news that we get to read or hear every day has an admissible reference. Why do we need to have a reference for a piece of fake news? How do these references make the news reliable? The logic is not complex – we are living in a world that is dominated by science or knowledge. We are tamed to trust anything that has numbers or references. Our education, not 100% perfect but at least to a certain extent made us question things that are before us. A majority of living humans will not believe that earth is flat because we are trained to understand the science of spherical earth - which is not conclusive; directly or indirectly. Even anyone with zero knowledge in astrophysics will know that earth is not flat, because we have a lot of empirical evidence that is bound within our day-to-day life to dismiss the idea of a flat earth – although we have a menial number of flat earthers; or at least the cinemas - which is more influential in deciding our behaviour; that we watch in theatres shows only the spherical earth that revolving sun – this is applicable even to theological features.

Unlike a century ago, we will not believe if someone says that they have witnessed the all mighty, rather we ask for empirical proof. As an information-driven race, we never stick to science extensively as the current world, even to talk anti-science hoax we need to produce scientific pieces of evidence – thus I suppose few godmen are keen to read science fictions and popular science books, a byproduct of popularizing science. On a lighter note Carl Sagan, Rachel Carson, Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking, Carlo Rovelli and others who write popular science books can be held responsible for, us hearing all the cosmic stories that dating back to millennia.

This is not intended to reject the scientific knowledge of human ancestors, rather evolve from where they have left. I have been hearing a Sangam Tamil poem that mentions about atoms along with the statement saying that Tamils knew the physics of atoms even before John Dalton, thereby consciously rejecting or by being unaware of the atomist tradition of Greek civilization or Democritus, the first philosopher to coin the word atom around 370 BCE. As evolved civilizations, undeniably ancient Tamils and Greeks had trade relations and sea routes, which we can understand from the visible archaeological pieces of evidence including coins and literary references. Human contacts via trade and sea would have helped humanity to share their knowledge. But rejecting the historical facts help certain groups to uphold pride which in turn help their economical/social/political agendas. Also, it helps people to claim pride in their existence.  I think we may apply this schema to numerous fictional or historical discourses that we claim as heritage or pride. Including the fictional stories of genetic modification, organ replacements, having rocket technology from ancient times, etc.

We can try for a more appropriate schema to the entire globe – maybe we can define a structure to explore the idea of 'making America great again'. To talk about the notion of great America, content creators should consciously forget about Native Americans, Afro-Americans, Mexicans, Asians, even Irish to some extent. Contents should revolve around stories of white supremacy, be extra watchful to make people forget about Native American Genocides, Slavery and vocal about building a wall between Mexico and the United States – the funniest story of this wall was, Texas, where the major portion of this wall is planned or built, was once a Mexican land and it was annexed by the US after Mexican war. Thus, any social media bogus content should have completely annihilated history or the half-hidden truth for someone's economical/social/political agenda. The structure of this sect of contents is simple, they should hold heritage or historical pride, with less or no facts. The very feeling of rich historical stories and their pride help people to trust them.    

                                             

Next schema would be shaping a content with quotes and refer to science or interweaving knowledge along with hoax content and making them genuine. Anything rituals, humans are in a situation to prove them as science if not it will not be considered as a legitimate practice. Lighting a candle, drinking cow urine, kneeling for prayer, bursting of crackers, chanting a religious verse, walking around a tomb - everything has relevance to cosmic rays, gravitational forces or the billions of photons emitting from the known and unknown horizons of universe. This applies to any self-styled godmen who proudly talk about cosmic theories, gods, rituals, and religions. Unlike 18^th or 19^th century a godman cannot talk god without science, or they cannot just say that god created the earth for humans and earth is the centre of this universe.  Modest opinion about these godmen is that their theories are still sticking with the Newtonian genre of physics because most of our school education is still sticking to Newton’s world. Rather, they can move further into Einstein’s world which is much more fascinating and adventurous. If I happen to meet a godman via time travel who might be preaching disciples about the notion of time and how time is relative but not absolute – thousands of followers may watch it stoned.         

One another famous social media content is around the economic, political and socio-cultural grounds of state or an organization or a group. A citizen of a third world state won’t believe that they are becoming a developing state just by an ordinary WhatsApp post. Whereas, if the same post bears the insignia of the United Nations people will recognize it and forward it to others. This very insignia convinces them and makes them believe that their state is doing so much to make their life luxurious or at least it acts as a soothing factor to claim the patriotic pride which eases the lives of the administrators. When there is a downfall in the economy you can use the insignia of world bank or IMF or even mainstream; like referring famous magazines from the west - particularly Times or Forbes. It can be your national flag, or your prime minister or national anthem being recognized as world’s best by Forbes or Times survey or by UNSECO – happened to come across recognition posts that have UNICEF title too. Or IMF or world bank recognizing your state as fastest growing economy amidst the worst economic performances in decades– fun fact about these two organizations is they will give this accreditation themselves even if it is not true, all a state has to do is to abide their oppressing regulations that tear apart a state’s sovereignty. 

These are not the only structures or logic that fake news world possess, they have infinite permutation and combinations. The keywords that make people angry, happy, comfort, orgasmic, hate, pride, is all we need. The content and its structures can be very much relative to the part of the globe where the content gets generated. No need to produce 'make America great again' content in Brazil rather we can produce thousands of contents that produce hatred, which may help someone's electoral victory. The big gap between the idea of fake content and original content is, the fake contents need only the keywords but not the fact, whereas the real contents need a lot of factual data. This makes fake content mushrooming in millions within days and reach a wider audience.      

              

COVID-19 pandemic produced millions of medical scientists, health practitioners, high energy physicists, astrophysicists, geopolitical observers, economic experts who can fix the threat of the microbe via sound waves from the bells and clapping or traditional medical experts who have the cure to a disease even before understanding the genomics of the microbe, astrophysicists or high energy physicists who have the ability to make the light waves (they should have used the term photon, which is even fancier) reaching Mars and producing the positive ultra violet sequences which will slay the virus by destroying the DNA, an economic expert who expects less or no implication on country's economy and so on.

Even we can come across contents that say how the ancestors used food as medicine and how it helped them in saving lives. If eating garlic or onion or vegetables or turmeric or neem would cure everything, then the Indian subcontinent wouldn’t have faced millions of influenzas deaths or thousands of smallpox deaths or polio attacks. It is not that I wanted to ignore the understanding of the dead humans and their civilizations rather I believe using them and evolving from them makes human life better. Or it is not to demean the anti-microbial power that many of the substances has - like garlic or pepper or neem. Not only the subcontinent, but any civilization would have found their initial medications through food and not only medication but everyday human races find new mechanisms to survive which is the inevitable order of knowledge or information that humans possess. It is much in agreement that neoliberalism and big pharma's have made the drug a huge profit commodity like oil or gold but that doesn’t make the empirical results of scientific treatment fake, science also acknowledges its own limitations and science or empirical knowledge is never a one-point solution for all our needs, but it is the better approach that we have with us. 

It is disheartening to hear a lot of anti-science or anti-vaccine contents which quotes Oxford or King’s college or ancients verses. In the middle of a pandemic, all I can think of is, what would have happened to the human race if Edward Jenner or Louis Pasteur or the entire human race would have permanently failed to find the idea of vaccination. All we need is an internet connection and a smart device to devalue the contributions by someone who spent their entire life to saving human lives. Is the science picture perfect? Or do we only have optimistic results from scientific inventions or discoveries? The commodification of science has decisive effects on earth and humanity – which we need to address by addressing capitalism and consumerism and neo-liberal ideas rather we cannot find one-stop solutions by talking anti-science ideas.

Returning to fake news in the times of a pandemic, which creates cultural/political identities to the microbe – national or religious identities. Just because COVID-19 emerges out of Hubei province in China, made it a Chinese virus and it helped leaders of many countries to hide their less preparedness irrespective of alarm from WHO. The mushroomed geopolitical experts and Illuminati historians termed it as bio-war. It is not that I am concluding, COVID-19 is not a bio-war but microbiologists or virologists who spend their entire life for understanding the microbes and tiny world of the human body reveals that COVID-19 is naturally mutated microbe from the family of Corona virus, but not a lab product. People's anger turned out to be xenophobia rather than questioning their own states. We could come across millions of memes and social media contents that forcefully try to prove COVID-19 as a Chinese virus. This is not a new model to human history, the very famous Spanish Flu or Influenzas didn’t originate in Spain, it reached Spain much later after the UK or France, but it was named Spanish Flu. Xenophobia always helps the states to divert peoples anger away. This is applicable even now, we are posting, witnessing and sharing millions of posts via Chinese manufactured smart devices, that encourages us to buy products manufactured by local corporations and to avoid Chinese, which will help to boost the local economy and to diffuse the Chinese act of bio-war.

Islamophobia is a cakewalk for most countries across the globe, you can create any number of fake Islamophobic contents and float them on the internet they will get routed automatically and the virus will get a religious identity. Transfer all the blames towards a community and escape the post effects of a disaster. Islamophobia is not grass rooted in the crisis of the pandemic, but it can be traced back to the 90s and post 9/11 globally. Every state in the world needs a concrete enemy to safeguard their mishaps and it will help their political agenda of the future.    

            

There are two interesting content that attracted me in the middle of these tough times. The first post that had the image of Jair Bolsonaro the president of Brazil, with a statement saying ‘we did everything but we are left with nothing, now all we have is to trust god’ or something similar and mentioned as Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte. This has been circulated among educated in the sub-continent – I applied the subcontinent’s logic of educated, anyone who can read English is educated. How this post became trustworthy is because it had a white face and it had the word trust in god, white face irrespective of who it validates the presidential position of Italy and the trust in god made it even a stronger message. Truth is it was not even told by Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, but the message became legitimate in some part of the world with Brazil president’s image. The second post was even more interesting that has been shared widely, which had the image of dead Robert Mugabe, the ex-president of Zimbabwe quoting about the isolation, lockdown, and quarantine. But Mugabe died in 2019, but a statement made by a dead soul from heaven or hell proved authentic. What made this post floating wider because it talks about the keywords of the current situation and it has age-old misogyny about being home with the wife.      

These two are just a micro-level illustration of millions and billions of social media contents that we read, watch, post and share. There are few other millions of fake contents that are being circulated and shared without any of these references or insignias or accreditations. Hoax news is not new to humankind, but the inorganic growth of fake news poses a threat to human cognitive senses. We are in the process of becoming believers of anything with appropriate keywords. The creators of fake news want human emotions as their keywords, these keywords make humans to get attracted to fake content, trust them, share them and defend them. Once a person has shared a piece of fake news which makes them defend that news by default, in fact defending more than the creator, because every human has an attitude that they are perfect or correct. This makes that person searches for more fake content on the internet and uses them as evidence to prove the content they have shared is authentic. 

As a species that can think and process information, we are travelling in the path towards anti-reasoning and anti-thinking. But it may have devasting effects, as Psychologist Dr Chrysalis Wright stated in a podcast 'If people start to believe false information then they start to doubt accurate information that is accurate. So, they start to just dispute scientific evidence. You know, they start to fully believe in this misinformation they start to kind of fall into numerous conspiracy theories and those types of things. And depending on the type of content that's in the fake news or misinformation that they're consuming, it can impact their attitudes.'