Recently I read an interview with a poet from the tuareg tribe. Apart from the striking beauty of his unimaginable existence in the middle of the Sahara desert, I found a quote that made me think. «A good story is always true, even if it never happened», the poet said, claiming that if a story resonated with people, it already was true.
This thought has been cherished by storytellers for centuries – writers, filmmakers, painters. For me, this is art at it’s best: catching the essence of human reality in words, pictures, thoughts. It’s why art is called art. Because it is so damn difficult to achieve. But when it does, it resonates with people. And maybe even changes reality.
But there is a clear distinction between art and information/news. Or, well, there was. Because the way people consume information changed so quickly, establishing unnamed formats and participants, that it melts with fiction and with bullshit. Depending on the context, fiction suddenly becomes information, bullshit becomes truth.
There was this story in the press last week about a dispute between an elderly woman named Diane and the hip Twitter-user Elan. He was live-tweeting it on a delayed flight on Thanksgiving, gaining the attention of about 1.2 million users. It was fresh and funny and everyone had a blast.
Except: it was all made up. A hoax, as they call those fake-stories. The young guy, producer of the infamous series The Bachelor, was bored, so he decided to «entertain his followers», as he puts it, with a fake story. A little real-time-soap-opera, starring himself. Not that the story was particularly good – it only seemed good because it seemed live and real. Internet, you’ve just been bullshitted. Again.
There are examples by the dozens. People who photoshop pictures during every major news-event, trying to fictionalize reality. Spin-Doctors who spread bullshit for fun. I know a few guys who have a bet going on: Who brings the most fake-stories into mainstream-news.
Art has an important role and so does the information-segment (even the entertainment, one might argue). But when it gets arbitrarily mingled by validity-addicted egomaniacs, all get harmed. As bullshit-stories are not nearly the truth, even tough they might resonate with people with their false pretenses. They make this world more bizarre and soap-opraesque than it actually is.