Wes as Performance Art
Jan. 27th, 2013 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weswilsonMy ability to enjoy the internet is increasingly hobbled by people's desire to stand on virtual street corners and loudly regurgitate any outlandish nonsense they come across.
I grow increasingly attracted to the idea that I should respond by turning my voice into a giant piece of performance art. I imagine that I could craft some rather magnificent lies with remarkable reach. If people are so eager to relinquish their sincerity and muddy the public discourse with easily disprovable propaganda, maybe I should increase the pressure by adding nonsense of my own.
But then I remember that it's usually the same people... with the same nonsense... almost all the time. And as much as I'd like to see them floundering with incredulity over some fake quote they know their hero never said, twitching with disbelief at some patently untrue "fact" that anyone could google, and totally innundated with the same misinformed image broadcast for months and years on end.... the odds remain slim that such a performance would actually impact those who need to learn that lesson most. The people with true intellect and character are reachable by far more constructive means, and trolling the trolls would make those people casualties of a war I'd never truly win.
Still... it's appealing... and I daydream about it... and I imagine a world where research and sincere discourse could trump ideological talking points...
I grow increasingly attracted to the idea that I should respond by turning my voice into a giant piece of performance art. I imagine that I could craft some rather magnificent lies with remarkable reach. If people are so eager to relinquish their sincerity and muddy the public discourse with easily disprovable propaganda, maybe I should increase the pressure by adding nonsense of my own.
But then I remember that it's usually the same people... with the same nonsense... almost all the time. And as much as I'd like to see them floundering with incredulity over some fake quote they know their hero never said, twitching with disbelief at some patently untrue "fact" that anyone could google, and totally innundated with the same misinformed image broadcast for months and years on end.... the odds remain slim that such a performance would actually impact those who need to learn that lesson most. The people with true intellect and character are reachable by far more constructive means, and trolling the trolls would make those people casualties of a war I'd never truly win.
Still... it's appealing... and I daydream about it... and I imagine a world where research and sincere discourse could trump ideological talking points...
