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Humankind, for the first time in its history is communicating with its thumbs, and in consequence, its collective brain is at risk. The electronic virtual reality, which has permeated our lives and steadily replaced our personal interactions since the 1990s, now dominates human perception. As of January 2024, over half of the world’s population, or 4.3 billion people, owned a smartphone, and were connected to mobile internet. And what they’ve come to believe and act upon is increasingly relegated to what comes through that device.
In a just and ethical world, our personal and social communications technologies would be hailed as a major achievement, and the sign of an advanced civilization. But the global cyberverse of 2025 has a malignant dark side.
When unregulated, as it presently is, it can become a deftly-wielded plaything and weapon of those who can shape the virtual reality it creates. Thus, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda (we’ll call it “MDP”) has burst upon our 21st Century world with a vengeance.
To best understand why an electronic reality surrogate has become so compelling, ubiquitous and powerful, we need to focus on the core of the basic problem, our basic human nature — and what we do with the sensory data we receive and process. To put it simply, it’s all about emotions. Advertising people learned long ago that you don’t sell cars by explaining the advanced metallurgical techniques of engine design. You skip logic and fast forward to sexy names, body design, horsepower and speed.
We’re human. And reacting and behaving emotionally is a key part of what makes us human (for good or ill). But emotions are also what make us killers, destroyers and fervent believers in lies.
We’re relative newcomers to Earth, only about 160,000 years old; the single surviving species of multiple hominids that once cohabited the Pleistocene with us. So, while we’ve not been alone among relatively intelligent beings on this planet, we are here in our billions today only because we’ve outcompeted, outbred or just out-murdered all our fellow hominids.
While during a fraction of those years we’ve created civilization and technology, genetically and neurologically, we are not unique among advanced life on earth. While we’ve indeed had our Einsteins, Goethes, Mozarts, and Voltaires, most of us are easily controlled and clannishly tribal hominids who revere power and celebrity and enjoy watching or engaging in real or simulated violence (check out 95% of all video games). Taking this into account upfront will give us a better picture of biological reality.
Nor have we evolved much governmentally. Throughout history, our societies have regularly been dominated by the most vicious individuals and aggressive groups among us. Hence, with few exceptions, we’ve been ruled by kings, emperors, dictators and strongmen who are interested in money, power, and aggression. When a sociocultural grouping gets an advance in technology, it often uses it to increase its power for killing, subjugation and chaos. The antiwar movements in modern aggressor nations are always fringe developments.
Attempts at inclusive compassionate societies have failed too often, which is not hardly evidence of godlike intelligence. In context, it’s worth remembering that the first person to suggest there could be a more kindly form of organized intelligent life (the 16th Century cleric Giordano Bruno) was burned at the stake.
The advertising profession is a fascinating bellwether for observing human behavior. When presented with easily understandable facts, we often fail to act in our own best interests. We all know that excessive speed, drunken driving and tailgating cause most vehicular accidents, Yet, around 1.2 million people die from automotive disasters each year, worldwide. Still, safety and common sense are rare indeed in car ads.
We’ve known for decades to avoid being overweight or to smoke or eat bad food, but it took federal action via the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (now in jeopardy along with other scientific bodies) to save millions of American lives from lung cancer and cardiac arrest.
While medical realities have never seriously worried advertisers, what does concern them is iconography and tribal symbolism. It also works in the political arena. Want to sell your particular brand of “patriotism”? Make sure you have flapping flags, weeping eagles, yelling low ribbons, wounded soldiers and other dramatic imagery, coupled with whomever you choose for an enemy, (Liberals, Immigrants, Jews), a few stock phrases (e.g. Deutschland Erwacht!, Viva Zapata! Make America Great Again!), and you’ve got your target audience in your pocket, or better, by the nose.
We are only as good as the information we receive, process, and act upon. Accordingly, we’re collectively not very good at resisting the daily dose of skillfully wrought and professionally-delivered blandishments, lies, and manipulations generated by the most recent round of sociopolitical idols? Especially when they are delivered via our increasingly primary news sources: Facebook, Instagram, X-Twitter, videomemes, emails etc.
The crucial question remains: are we even capable of designing a society resistant to lies and manipulations of reality? Or, for that matter, immune to the active cultivation of our most ancient, atavistic and negative traits? We are historically susceptible to skillful mental manipulations, especially when they are globally simplistic, penetrative, and incessant. It’s doubtful, and the proof is in the millions of deluded and emotionally overwrought humans who have fanatically marched over the cliff like lemmings for Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and, most recently, for the latest ignorant and criminal demagogue.
An enlightened democracy is, and always has been, a fragile experiment with no assurance of success, and one with the tide of history constantly running against it. The men who created the United States in the late 18th century were a stunning anomaly — an assembly of astonishing intellects in one place at one time and devoted to creating the utopia of a practical and enlightened republic. They did their best to plan for a stable, balanced and sophisticated future. But, admirable as those efforts were, technologies have advanced. And they demonstrate that the noble goal of unhindered free speech bears re-assessment when global programs of lies and manipulations of reality become universally immersive.
Twenty-first century technology has now flooded this already fraught collection of connected humans, marching in electronic lockstep, with MDP. The result: a comprehensively omniscient perceptual world where truth is a matter of opinion and phrases like “alternate facts” have begun to stand in for reality.
The social cyberverse has presented a novel opportunity to utilize immersive global MDP to foster programs of racism and intolerance, inflame nationalism, support aggressive posturing, and turn back science, medicine, environmental protection and global ecology.
Carefully planned and organized electronic MDP delivered incessantly on a daily basis, every few minutes, 24/7 on social media, from non-legacy “news” sources, and via non-solicited emails and texts has been instrumental in effectively dementing populations.
Targeted demographics with terabytes of information at their fingertips are left with no idea how to properly assess and use it. And, in such an environment, charlatans and criminal manipulators have risen to national prominence and adulation.
The generators of MDP have also learned this lesson: do this properly and you don’t have to try to convince people that anyone who opposes you is wrong. Just skip the intellectual arguments. Use ridicule, demonization and tribalism unrelentingly. Appeal to the lowest common denominator and make certain that the tribe shares these perceptions electronically with each other. Just make all information received from any other source seem like misinformation or propaganda. In other words, accuse it of being exactly what you, in fact, are.
Deliberate falsification goes dangerously beyond the political arena. Our medical NGO, International Medical Crisis Response Alliance (IMCRA), was tasked by the U.N. in 2013 with disseminating expert remedial medical education to healthcare professionals worldwide dealing with health emergencies. However, during COVID we noted a new phenomenon: accusations that we were circulating “delusions” and “liberal fake news.”
This followed a flood of social media and “conservative” posts about the cause of the virus, the effectiveness of treatments, the accuracy of fatality numbers, the value of face masks, the safety of the vaccine, and so forth. This was clearly serving someone’s agenda and it wasn’t that of medical caregivers – or those at risk of infection and death.
While tens of thousands died, debates roared into prominence about the balance between personal liberties and public health. The U.S. Administration promulgated deadly nonsensical theories about the nature of the virus, which, while leaving the gullible unprotected, debased the tenor of public dialogue around the world, including Canada. Conspiracy theories concocted to undermine the authority and discipline of science blossomed. In the U.S., false claims about even disaster responses became so common that Homeland Security had to recommend that local emergency managers have advance plans to deal with expected misinformation before the next flood, hurricane, or derailment.
So far, intelligent resistance to the diminishing role of truth has been slow, feeble, and inadequate to the task ahead. In the US, there has been a lack of innovative plans for meeting MDP terrorism head on. While the hoped-for good guys seem to dither and wring their hands, the lies and intellectual offal just pour out every few minutes, every day, 24/7: “Another great victory for MAGA!”, “Every issue resolved!”, “Corrupt Liberals exposed!”
Efforts by U.N. bodies and the European Union have been sporadic and have produced no solid solutions. Fact checking has failed to grapple with the magnitude of the problem and censorship is instantly attacked as “suppression of free speech.” Many, exhausted by the endless battle against illogic, falsehood and manipulations, have just given up.
So yes, it looks bad and sometimes hopeless. In fact, globally, it often looks like 1933 all over again. But fortunately, there are answers. The entities who flood the cyberverse with lies and misrepresentations for power and financial gain, or to interfere in the politics of rival nations, have an Achilles heel. No agenda can stay in power and wield its influence without popular support. And popular support is a direct function of how exciting, convincing, and appealing the data going into the human brain remains.
So, what if those who value truth stole a page from the MDP playbook? What if they distributed facts in ways that were equally exciting, convincing, and appealing? In the political field, the deceivers are not the only ones who can wave national flags and claim intense patriotic devotion. The liars are not the only ones who can co-opt deep atavistic emotions. Might not exposure to that spur some comparative curiosity and objectivity? In Canada, for instance, U.S. President Donald Trump’s unprecedented annexation threats have sparked a nationwide firestorm, as podcasts and social media lit up with patriotic anger.
IMCRA and its partner organizations have launched a project called Disseminating Truth in TeleCommunications (DTTC), intended to test this hypothesis in an academic study that will track the impact of accurate health-related messages garbed in MDP clothing, and will scientifically assess and quantify recipients’ reactions to those messages.
This program will not answer all questions about MDP and its effectiveness. More investigation and aggressive action are needed. But the Midnight Fire Alarm is ringing, and something effective must be done. Before it is too late to attempt to do so, those who recognize the deadly prospect of widespread distrust in science and democratic government must wake up and bring the hoses.