Heroes & Villains of the DisMisInformation Age

Not exactly meet the parents here, but I had been meaning to introduce you to some of our friends. I am sure you would find many of them familiar and already in your network of acquaintances, just that you were not formally introduced. So let me do the honours.

First of all, let me clarify your understanding if you know which ‘age’ we are in? No I am not asking whether you are in the middle ages like myself (depending on how middle is your middle and mine) or whether I am asking how your mindset is still from the middle ages or not. I am just asking to confirm the ages as in ‘industrial age’, ‘medieval age’ etc. If you have responded that we live in the ‘Information Age’, then you are on the money.

However, one caveat here is that we ‘were’ in the Information Age but not anymore. It's been a while since we have been living in what I can combine to term as ‘DisMisInformation Age’. Basically a combination of ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ which ultimately leads us to dismiss each other’s viewpoints resulting in mostly zero-sum games.

Again, do you think you are clear about the difference between ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ to start with? When distinguishing between misinformation and disinformation, keep one very important word in mind: intent. Although both words refer to types of wrong or false information, only disinformation is wrong on purpose so yes governments and media have been using ‘disinformation’ as a tactic for long time, possibly even before the actual Information Age dawned upon us.

In the backdrop of misinformation, disinformation and the dismissal of the facts in the process, here are the 3 villains that are ruling the shows.

Venerate is the constant online blind bias, praise, side-taking, border-line fanatical expression of loyalty towards a person, state, ideology or belief. While on the surface, it looks positive and harmless, it is still difficult to penetrate the mind devoted to veneration. They are closed to critical thinking and prone to all forms of biases. In fact, Venerate the Villain loves to enforce the confirmation biases by actually showing you and sharing with you the kind of content that you already believe in or love to consume.

Vilify is somewhat the opposite of Venerate, like its evil twin sibling, where its sole mission is to insult, belittle, condemn, criticise even the smallest of things, issues, imperfections of other people or causes. Use of social media and platforms like X, TikTok for example, have made it easier for random people to be friends with the villain ‘Vilify’ to spread hate, tease, abuse their targets in a few clicks and characters.

Veer Off is the third villain of the DisMisInformation Age where you simply get lost in the flood of uncontrolled consumption of information through your screens that you often forget where you started from, what you were looking for and how come you ended up wasting hours just scrolling through other people’s braindumps.

So these were our 3 villains of the DisMisInformation Age to DisMiss all mental capacity expected from you otherwise as a rational human being. In order to counter these villains, let me introduce you to the Super Heroes of our times.

The Wonder Woman is called Verify, and she demands that we take the pain and defeat our online inertia to verify what we are being fed. Its not easy, because human minds naturally tend to go for something which requires less burning of mental fuel. But what happens in the end is that we end up being fed whatever the Villains want to feed us. As such, it is essential that we verify information that we care for and if we consider it to be important. Possibly not all information needs to be verified and it's your call to decide which. In this regard, I propose we follow the principle of the Courtroom Scenario while verifying a piece of information online which we deem to be of extremely important and urgent nature.

In a typical courtroom, have you noticed who the stakeholders are? The Jury, the advocates for the prosecution and the defendants, the accused party, the complaining party, two sets of witnesses and the Audience. So a case is reviewed by and in the presence or involvement of generally 8 groups of stakeholders. Similarly, if an information is really important, you have to get it verified by at least 8 different sources to establish its veracity. Yes I made it up, its my theory.

Next hero is VPN. Sorry no VPN software company is sponsoring me to write this here. But there is no alternative but to use VPN for your online life. Why you should or should not use VPN? Just do another search online to get the facts yourself. On the face of rampant cybersecurity threats and personal data scams, not using VPN is like venturing out with your valuables displayed to all at all times and especially in crowded places.

Finally, the Hero of this overflowing information age is called Value Add. His main mission is to ask and remind you what you have been able to contribute to this torrent of information and conversely, how you have transformed your life and those of others using the power of the internet and the connectedness of our times? Borderline philosophical yes, but if you think that you have not been able to learn anything for yourself or for your community or for any cause by using what internet offers to you, then Value Add is mad at you. Also, if you have not contributed anything constructive and positive in return to the world by using the internet - then also our hero Value Add gives you a ‘zero’ for your passive participation in the process.

So there you go, now you are introduced properly to the 3 Villains and the 3 Heroes of the DisMisInformation Age. Now before spreading misinformation or disinformation or acting on one, before believing whatever you already want to believe in and before dismissing that other information may also exist, consider verifying it from multiple sources, think about your own growth and that of others using the internet and your contribution no matter how small or big. And finally, be safe online and keep others safe.