#100hardtruths

#58, choose to know, name, and share your own internet truths (an invitation)

In 5 #hardtruths and 2 new pledges @#50 I wrote, “choose to know, name, and share your own internet truths. We all know truths about this internet—the place in which we swim, live, and drown daily. Naming our truths to ourselves and others—how our lives here feel, how they mean, what we want, who we know, follow and trust—is a vital step in building critical media literacy.” When I wrote this, I meant to differentiate between objective or scientific or journalistic facts and the deeper sustaining beauty of truth, between data and information and the more human ethics of personal, political, and communal knowledge.

Then, a few days later, without planning to, I did something else: I performed a version of personal internet truth sharing in “#55: choose to be digitally productive rather than reactive” when I found myself trying to name what I had learned from my own processes, and linked contradictory feelings, while making this project: how the formative lies of the internet dupe even those of us who claim to know better; how the deception of its formative promise that we each can be seen and heard weaves us into its willing fabric of need, deception, pleasure and its linked abuses. I felt vulnerable writing that post, and still find that I am flitting in and out of that affective place: escalated heart beat, the flushing cheeks of shame.

I end each of these #hardtruths with a “See More” list of readings and resources that share the burden of knowing and doing #100hardtruths-#fakenews with others in my community of digital media literacy practice and care. Here, I ask you to provide me with your internet truth. I’ll add them to the list, if and when I receive them.

See More Internet Truths, how our lives here feel, how they mean, what we want, who we know, follow and trust:

To see a poetic response to this hardtruth:

I'm a veteran and a refugee

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