(10) Truth and Trolls and Ramases ll
Hwaet!
In the autumn of 2010 Robert West (fictional character) sat in his room in downtown St Paul. He was cold and hungry. He had no work. All he owned now was his lap top. He had been racking his brain for ways to make some money. There must be something he could do. He had trawled the jobs available section in Craig’s List and was now glancing through YouTube to see what other people were doing. Anything. He thought Anything. Idly he began speculating on the possibility of earning a few cents from having a You Tube channel. But he had nothing to put on it. And besides, you needed thousands of hits to make any money. And an idea began to form in his brain. There might be a way, he thought, to make use of the algorithms that drove YouTube. He began speaking into web camera on his laptop. Within a few minutes he had a video made. And then another. And another. And as he published them with suitable titles. He began to get hits. He told stories. Fictions. Fabrications. The more he made up, the more the hits came rolling in. And the wilder the stories he made up, the more contentious the views he expressed, the more hits he got. He made up stories about candidates for the coming elections. He made ridiculous allegations. He made up stories about Republicans and about Democrats equally. He invented nonsense about Elon Musk and The Pope. The sex life of The Dalai Lama he found a particularly fruitful subject. He didn’t care. This wasn’t about politics or religion. And when he wrote some scurrilous nonsense about one candidate he immediately made up another refuting it. The allegations became wilder and wilder. And the wilder they were the more hits he got. It didn’t matter whether the hits were Likes or Dislikes whether the comments spawned vitriol or adoration. The algorithms were hungry for his hits and promoted his videos for him. The comments section on his videos filled up and overflowed. People got angry. Virtual blows were exchanged. Robert West went on making up more and more outrageous rants inventing conspiracy theories, promoting ideas he, himself did not believe in. He just needed the hits. The world heard his stories and the world shifted. Nothing would ever be the same again. He became rich. He had, indeed, invented the future.
But West was not the first to run his fantasies conveniently omitting the “What if…” element. Fake news was popular as far back as Rameses ll who had turned the defeat of the Egyptians at Kadesh into a stunning victory. The Romans were particularly fond of making up false narratives about their enemies and as soon as the printing press was invented hoaxes, spoofs and sheer outright lies became common. And don’t get too snooty about it. Sensation has been used with disregard for the truth as long as people have told stories. And how much of popular culture is founded on the broadside ballads of the eighteenth century where truth was completely foreign to the producers of popular sensations on the event of some notorious murderer being publicly hanged. Even Today they are a fact of life. Governments churn out blatant lies and total fabrications as a matter of course. There are whole industries where children are paid to churn out fictions of the most outrageous kinds for blatant videos and websites. And the more outrageous, the more hits. The more hits. The more anger they provoke, the more hits. And the more hits the more wealth someone acquires.
In this world, the truth is irrelevant.
In the end did it matter whether Ramases won or lost at Kadesh? He lived a long and fruitful life. He was lauded by his people and he had some remarkably large statues made of himself which have survived to this day and draw tourists to Egypt three and half thousand years after his death.
“If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works” - Ramases ll
And is there a difference between this crafting of history and what I do when I write a story? I guess not. I mean I can claim the moral high ground by saying my work is not intended to deceive. And indeed, I say, it is in my wobbly, imprecise, self-centred way meant to illuminate the truth of a particular human condition. But the fact is, and I know it very well, that any of my fictions could disappear down the drain of the internet and reappear as some sewage splattered monster to cause havoc with some poor innocent’s mind.
And I must beware of the Sherlock Holmes syndrome where the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle so convinced himself of the efficacy of his hero’s abilities that he himself took on the role of detecting in a high profile case.
Fictions are an important component of the story telling ethos. It is a way of condensing experience. I can leave out the dull bits and, instead, draw your attention to the ideas I would like you to think about. Using the emotional cues that I give you. Surprising you and synchronising our thinking.
Story telling is essential in drawing together disparate peoples into a single nation or belief group. Stories have been filled with Gods and Demons as they convey a particular set of beliefs. As with the internet trolls, the truth or otherwise of a set of stories is irrelevant. It is the way in which these stories make sense of a senseless universe. They give power to the otherwise powerless by letting them belong. “I may posess nothing in this world but I have this belief and I will cling to it with all my might.” For the contemporary trolls it is a way of gaining leverage or agency merely by being abusive of contentious.
My excuse for dabbling in this unclean mire is that I invent characters that embody many of the true aspects I observe in everyday human behaviour. I must make them credible by listening closely to how characters would speak in the real world so that you do not spot the fiction. Once you and I are travelling on parallel paths then I can offer you insights that I have gathered. Enabling you to see the world from a different point of view. Fiction becomes a parable. It enables you to see from another perspective. It is the essential component in understanding the world in 3 dimensions rather than 2.
BUT…
Here is something that will make your ears stand on end.
The origin of the cluster of conspiracy theories that are called Q-Anon was in an online game where participants had to dream up the most fantastic improbabilities and then act out the game as if these were true. Somehwere the game leaked out into the real world and people began to believe that these fictions were factual. And because, they were so mind bogglingly improbable, they believed them
“If you tell a lie, tell a big one and stick to it” was said in 1892 to have been a “schoolboy maxim.” “If you must lie, tell a big one” was cited in print in 1919 and as Joseph Goebbels said: “…and keep repeating it.”
In a world where fact and fiction have collided so fundamentally in our minds the parable ceases to have any meaning and just becomes another primrose path to everlasting damnation.
And now we see that the story-teller’s humble attempts at bringing a little enjoyment in fiction have become weaponised. Vlad and Donald see the value of fictions to move people emotionally and by continually insisting on their veracity have persuaded the people of Britain that the Russian wish for a disunited Europe and an anti-democratic rejection of voting have brought the world to the verge of destruction.
What I need is some way of signalling that something is intentionally fictional. Some way of signalling this “What if…” without bricking up the entrance to the underworld of fantasy.
Elon Musk has already said that Twitter users should hide some sorts of comic fiction behind the label “Parody”. Is that enough? Or even right?
Perhaps we writers should agree on a sort of statement at the beginning of every fictional account rather like the cookie acceptance button or the disclaimer at the end. Throughout the ages writers have found ways to code the beginning of a fiction “Once upon a time…” “Long ago in a Galaxy far away… “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story” “Arma virumque cano” or “Hwaet…” Thereby opening the door and beckoning you in to another world.
Perhaps every story teller that deals in fiction should be obliged to start it with “What if..?” Please Like and Subscribe if you agree. And leave your comments below.