Lawn signs in 2 years are going to have troll as a verb before daring vote or elect. In 4 QR codes and an Open version of a historical typeface. 6, direct-mailed wash-in fabric treatments. 8, Sodastream flavors, The Aristocrats!
The point of the survey was not to establish whether people can establish whether something is true or not but ‘just’ about whether people can tell when someone is asserting a fact as opposed to making a statement of opinion.
So: “90% of the federal budget is spent on Haribo sweets” is a factual statement regardless of whether it is true or not.
“Federal spending on Haribo sweets is too high” is an opinion statement.
The survey was trying to establish whether people can tell the difference.
Methodology is set out here:
4 Likes
I agree with this. I get a lot of my news off the internet, and my father and I make it a habit to watch the world news on NBC. I’ve noticed lately how many things I’ve already heard about before the story “breaks” on television. Not to mention that there are sometimes details I’ve read that aren’t included in the broadcast, and at least a couple times when there’s a distinct “spin” on the topic coming through in TV reporting that doesn’t quite match what I’ve read.
5 Likes
I think so too. My father (74) was raised with much more trust and faith in authority than we tend to have now. It bothers him sometimes how willing I am to call authority into question and see opposing sides. But I grew up post-Watergate (I’m 46), and I think that had an influence. It’s led to some… interesting (and occasionally heated) conversations.
5 Likes
From what I’ve seen older people are simply more trusting across the board which is part of the reason scammers target them so heavily. I doubt it’s actually due to age itself. If I go back to my grandparents’ generation they were much less trusting and less likely to be swayed than their children. My guess is that Silent and Boomer era Americans didn’t spend their youths carefully listening to adults who act like children, there was some back/front stage differentiation back then and frankly I think a lot of people have simply not taken the time to sort out fact from fiction in their own lives. An inability to grasp reality is possibly something I hate more in humans than an impulse towards cruelty… ignorance is only useful to people who enjoy controlling others. That hatred comes from a lifetime of witnessing the consequences and making an effort to be good at that skill. Anyone who doesn’t practice it daily from early life is going to suck at it more and until most people don’t suck at it all of us carry the consequences.
3 Likes
Digital fluency is a big part of it I think, I have a hunch that if the same information were presented in a more traditional method such as some guy standing on a street corner handing out pamphlets and screaming about the end times, then a lot of older people would probably be a bit more able to see it for what it is. It’s easy to mimic the look and feel of actual journalism online because you’re basically just making a glossy pamphlet for your personal opinions… and you can easily get those promoted through official looking platforms because it’s literally only profit driven. Then again people standing on street corners have successfully started cults. Who knows, perhaps the clever young people just die of exasperation early. /s
5 Likes
I’m not saying that “all boomers are to blame” which would be a silly thing to say… I’m saying that many of the people in positions of power today are indeed baby boomers, and much of the public that votes regularly are boomers, and much of the people who have created the current landscape are boomers. I’m not saying ALL boomers are to blame or that YOU personally are to blame. Why the hell would I say something like that? Any generation, which is of course a social, consumer construct more than anything else, if full of a variety of view points. I’d thought that would go without saying.
My larger point about boomers, is that generally speaking, the events of the 60s and early 70s especially in the US created a strong sense of mistrust of the government and of some institutions among many boomers. You can check out Elizabeth Grace Hale’s book A Nation of Outsiders, which sort of addresses this concept.
I suppose I could be wrong, or just an asshole. I mean, I was dumb enough to think that getting a phd would get me somewhere in life.
4 Likes
Do not get me wrong. It was not me thinking you meant “all boomers”, but there’s a lot of that around in general these days.
But I think your larger point about ‘a strong sense of mistrust’ is limited to a smaller minority than perhaps you might be implying. Too many people still swallow everything the establishment (and its media barons) feed them, and always have done. They didn’t like the anti-Vietnam protests, they didn’t like hippiedom, they don’t like drugs, and they don’t like cherished institutions being attacked or demeaned or dodubted or questioned. Maybe it’s less so in the US but I feel it is like this in the UK.
Right, this seems to be a grammar/rhetoric issue, not an issue about recognizing truth.
1 Like
Thanks L0ki. I missed the methodology link.
1 Like
I learned the difference in 1950. I still know how to tell the difference. But then, I’ve been a news junkie since 4th grade. I also know the difference between fantasy and science fiction.
1 Like
I suspect that it’s due to similar reasons as the age/conservatism correlation.
Basically, older people tend to be more politically conservative because (a) economic class influences ideology and (b) poor people die younger.
The people most likely to be distrustful of authority are those most familiar with its abuses; the poor. The people most likely to be accepting of authority are those most familiar with its patronage; the wealthy. And older people trend wealthier, because poor people don’t survive that long.
3 Likes
Please spread the word!
But I think even conservative boomers eventually embraced anti-establishment views, primarily through libertarianism… Again, though, I’m talking primarily about the US context, but I suspect that the upheaval in the 60s into the 80s in GB might have contributed to at least some anti-establishment, especially around issues of immigration. Plus, it was both labor and the Tories who have been dismantling the postwar welfare state, yeah? I think it’s in part about misdirection by people in power, who claim outsider status to get through an anti-state/anti-regulatory agenda… feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on the British case, of course.
3 Likes
I do not disagree with you, and probably broadly agree.But hasn’t libertarianism become the establishment? As ever, maybe the terms need defining / may mislead us or be misinterpreted by other readers or those we talk about. Anti-establishment? Which establishment? I guess there’s a question whether UK immigration was promoted by the establishment or was seen by others who considered themselves the establishment as being highly destabilising of that establishment. The New Labour and Tory govts that dismantled the post-war welfare state over here - well, again, were they establishment (despite the post-war consensus having become the establishment) or were they thus anti-establishment? Was Thatcher one or the other? In the UK case I think the likes of Johnson, Gove and Rees-Mogg and assorted antediluvian pro-Brexit Tories are increasingly now behaving as if they ARE from the establishment, yet during the referendum campaign they adopted the Faragist pose of being anti-establishment outsiders. It’s confusing. Yes there are (and always have been) those who wish to disrupt (destroy?) the status quo and they will paint themselves as outsiders, whereas they are in fact often as inside as you can get. And in the case of the Brexiteer right (named above), the conservative establishment-loving boomers sided with them … umm, so I guess I just agreed with your opening sentence. 
So I’d better stop the stream of concsiousness your post provoked, by concluding #notall(insertwhatevergroupwemaybetalkingabout)
1 Like
I totally agree, but it still embraces the language of anti-establishment, and I think a fair number of people embrace that idea.
That’s good questions! I think it’s become partisan - the people you political oppose (whether they’re in power or not is absolutely immaterial) are considered to be the establishment, and are to be opposed at all costs.
Well, it goes back to the laws that allowed people from the former colonies (then newly established members of the Commonwealth) to immigrate to the UK pretty freely (that was in the 40s? Wasn’t labor in power then, in the immediate postwar period?). And it was in the postwar period where you see the establishment of the welfare state in the UK as we (or rather you, I guess, since I don’t live there) know it. So you get this wave of new immigrants in the next 20-30 years, some of whom are benefiting from the rise of British socialism… then you get people out of power (conservatives, Tories) sometimes embracing dog whistling language about immigrants - the Rivers of Blood Speech by Enoch Powell (was that his name) comes to mind. There were some race riots in the 60s and 70s, too, correct?
Indeed, it was a bipartisan effort, for sure (the neo-liberal post Cold War wave of politics). But both seemed to have the rhetoric of “anti-establishment” and of accusing the other side of being the establishment… all seemed to be in the service of the neo-liberal agenda (meaning pro-corporate, anti-state agenda… Karl Polyani characterized that as putting humanity in service to the market, as opposed to having markets serve the needs of humanity). But in reality BOTH are establishment, because they are people shaping our lives, people in positions of political and economic power to make decisions about the field that the rest of us will live within. But the language of anti-establishment is a powerful means of gaining support, even if it’s based on a myth that there is someone else who is really in charge… It’s little more than a rhetorical trick to get votes, I think.
Indeed. It’s a rhetorical trick to get support, because people like to feel like they’re fighting against something that they feel in their bones they can’t control, ya know? People (most of us) feel like we have little means of controlling these powerful forces, and so an anti-establishment pose by politicians (who are very much establishment) allows them to identify with these voters who feel like they’re not being heard, and to get their votes…
Absolutely! And most importantly…
(And I would like your post, but I’m all out of likes…)
4 Likes
Among your many good points, THIS! It needs to stop and be reversed, STAT.
2 Likes
And the crazy thing is that this particular insight was made in the early 1940s… Polyani blamed marketization (in part) for the world wars and the depression (all of which he lived through). He wasn’t altogether wrong on that, either. Imagining your fellow man as competitors or as less important than market forces is indeed a dangerous mind set to have, that can lead to mass slaughter… but as Eugene Hutz once noted, “nobody learn no nothing from no history…”
4 Likes
Yeah, this shit is OLD.
I was recently made more aware of this than ever when I went to buy a train ticket here. When I was young there were peak and off-peak fares and it was all British Rail, so any train would do.
Now, I am made to compete with my fellow travellers. The price was X when I first looked. It was some sort of ‘advance off-peak special deal number 97’ ticket on a direct train to where I wanted to go, at a prescribed time. I needed to confirm arrangements with others. Once I had, I went back and the price was now X+£10. Train companies now behave like airlines. I failed to compete effectively enough, in time to bag one of the limited edition tickets before they all sold out, so I had to buy a more expensive one for the same train. My fellow travellers out-competed me. And when I got to the station 90 minutes early on the day, for other reasons, I asked if I could get on an earlier train (and pay a supplement perhaps, to do so). No, the other trains were from other train companies so I would have to abandon my ticket and buy another from another company to do that.
Fuck marketisation and false competition.
(PS There’s ‘likes’ rationing here?)
4 Likes
Yeah, I see it as a historical force still being worked out from the rise of industrialization and modernization… we talk about being in the post modern period, but really this is still part of the same thing…
All that with the train sounds like a pain in the ass…Sorry!
The amount of likes got raised a while ago, but every now and again, you can hit the “like” limit… I think there is some technical reason for it, but you’d have to ask the architects about that…
Although I keep getting the message, but my like clicks keep staying, so I don’t know…
3 Likes
