The Death of Media Literacy

Growing up, critical thinking was always taught in schools. I'm Gen X and even in college they taught us how to parse through information we received whether it was through mass media or a local publication and compare it to other sources to see if what was being reported was real. Well, that's all gone now.

I can't trace it back to where it started, at least I don't have any scientific data. On an anectodal level I trace some of it back to the 2016 election. AI wasn't around yet, which tells me this is more of a people problem vs. a tech problem. Social media was around and Facebook as at its peak. The common thing I would see is memes with images that had clearly been photoshopped. One was the Obamas with the wrong hand over their hearts, in researching the original photo it was easy to find the photo had been flipped. When I pointed that out to the person who posted it he replied "That's YOUR opinion!" well no, its not an opinion its a fact.

There were numerous other memes as well. My favorite was the opeining of the doors at the Dallas Cowboys AT&T Stadium showing a big crowd rushing in and the caption was it was immigrants streaming across the border. God help you if you tried to explain to someone it what it really was. We now live in an age of confirmation bias. People find the image, or with AI generate the image that presents the narrative they want, and they post it as truth and that becomes their truth.

Too many people don't bother to question things. I haven't yet figured out if its willful ignorance and confirmation bias, or if we've all just gotten that dumb. I admit I've fallen for some AI photos before because I looked at it quickly and shared it. Only to find later I'd been duped, but I'll delete it once I realize its fake. I've seen people double down and say "Well, it COULD be real!"

I mean, yes and Bigfoot could be real too, but that doesn't mean he's going to come stomping through my yard anytime soon. Its not even limited to political stuff. The most popular photos on Facebook are fake AI movie posters of movies or sequels that don't exist, with a ChatGPT synopsis of the fake story. Some large account posts it and they get shared thousands of times. Once again, don't try to explain to someone it isn't real.

My old habit is to google the said item to see if I can find any actual source, and usually I can't. But if you point that out, people just get mad. I think movie posters irritate me more than the political stuff. They both manipulate people's emotions in various ways to get a reaction. The most frustrating is when you post a real news article and I will admit, journalism is also on its death rattle right now. But you show someone a verifiable source how what they posted isn't real and they say the souce you posted is fake or biased.

Many large media outlets have totally sold out to the current administration and are doing everything to appease them. My focus has been on following independent journalists and smaller publications. Wired has been doing great work and while I'm not a fan of the Substack platform, there are some great journalists there who have been fired by legacy media who are now free to do the real work.

But none of that matters if no one believes it. Even in the art world, while I have used AI and posted lots of AI art and images for various reasons, I've gotten away from it because I see what its doing. I saw a traditional artist the other day kicked out of an art group because they thought her painting was AI. They didn't ask her, they just assumed because it was so well done.

When it comes to movies and graphic design, people conflate AI with CGI which are 2 totally different mediums and CGI takes a lot of training, skill and hardware to do correctly, where as AI you just need a model and a prompt. There is nothing fake or dishonerable about CGI, its a legitimate medium. AI is the one that has all the ethical questions.

I don't take issue with anyone who uses AI, I think efforts need to be spent on the lawmakers and corporations creating and funding this stuff to fix it and put the proper guardrails on it. Yelling at someone on Facebook for making an AI avatar isn't going to fix anything.

That said people who make AI deepfakes should be yelled at. Though it seems a lot of this fake stuff is foreign bot accounts trying to spread misinformation. I could literally write a whole book about this but that is too much. The fact is, somewhere along the line something has happened.

Everyone thinks their opinion is valid

While social media is great, I still like it and use it a lot. And I'm all for free speech and discussion. Some opinions are just meaningless. Like when people want to argue against well researched and peer reviewed, widely accepted scientifit data, because they saw a YouTube video or read a meme.

My wife is an attorney here in Texas has has been one for 25 years. Yet a woman from Canada on my Facebook page once tried to get into an argument with her on my page about U.S. Constitutional law based on a single class she took in Canada a few years ago. She got really angry and ugly and I finally explained, look my wife is an attorney. She does this for a living. You don't understand how our country is set up let alone how our courts here work (she was trying to argue an Indiana Supreme court case from 1890's was the same as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.) Her response was, "Judge's write opinions! Why don't I get an opinion!"

First, judge "opinions" is a legal term for their ruling and the legal reasoning behind it. Second, your opinion is pointless when everything about it is factually incorrect ten ways from sideways. Sure you can express whatever you want, but it doesn't mean anything.

During COVID, I made a post encouraging people to wear masks to protect each other. Someone commented on my page a book length rant about forcing my beliefs on people. I was like, its a virus not a religion. Anyway, I'm getting into the weeds here with examples.

When it comes to actual art and movies and music that is a whole different aspect. I've seen authors and artists ripped to pieces because they created something dark or violent and people immediately assume its a manifesto. I've done some dark and creepy art myself as a way to express the demons and dark thoughts I have in my dreams and stresses of every day life. If I draw someone's head exploding, it doesn't not mean I want to go around blowing up people's heads. Its an expression of how my head feels when I'm overstimulated.

I've seen people drag actors for playing Nazis in movies they were hired to play them in, or actors who played serial killers, or other violent types harassed online. I remember when I went to horror cons, the guy who played Eugene from the Walking Dead had a drink thrown in his face because of how awful his character had been on the show. Emily Kinney who plays beth was getting death threats at shows. Over her character. On TV.

This is a common thread and not to sound like an old codger, but I see it the most with Gen Z and A. But I can't blame them a they grew up with just internet and social media. Plus I know from my own kids' schooling, schools don't teach critical thinking and nuance anymore. They teach state tests. There is no actual time for teachers to help the young minds develop and process information. So now, when a large accounts tweets "Breaking News" it goes viral before anyone can even question what really happened.

Then you have actual live events that are real events that happen, like the Charlie Kirk assassination, and I had people argue with me that whole incident was AI. I didn't even know what to say to that. We live in a time with things like AI and social media something fake and even dangerous can make its way into the Zeitgeist before anyone has 2 seconds to verify it. I've even seen major news outlets jump on these fake stories and fake trends because they didn't want to be scooped, only to have to retract it later.

Its dizzying and scary and to be honest I don't know what the solution is. As someone who needs social media to share my art and my blogs and most of my friends are online since I work from home, I just have to be extra careful what I allow myself to consume and even if something is spreading wild online, to stop and verify it before I work myself up. Its tiring and exhausting, but if more of us took a step back and checked facts before hitting "share" things wouldn't be so out of control.

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