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• 1 2017-11-06T18:48:13-08:00 #3: Trump is our rightful internet president 6 February 18, 2017 plain 2019-06-26T03:32:51-07:00 Given, as I have established in truths 1-2 (and elsewhere) that the internet is a place where:
  • the true/false dichotomy disintegrates
  • deception and manipulation organize and popularize discourse
  • neoliberal values of corporate ownership and control trump all other moral systems
  • aggressive behavior rooted in racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic beliefs is permitted and often supported
  • the masking of real commitments and structures wedded to a brutal capitalism is pasted over with the thinnest veneer of entertainment and mock democracy
  • chaos and plenty mask dark and focused control for a singular few
  • expertise is flattened in the name of a bogus populism
  We Americans helped, or at least allowed, the internet/ourselves to produce the conditions where our president reflects the norms and values of that place that most of us more and more frequently call home.
  
  Further reading:
  • From Home to Public Forum: Media Events and the Public Sphere, by Barbie Zelizer
    “I think that consideration of the media as a whole is important when considering the rise you are claiming of the fake news. It is important to consider not just the role of the viewer in relation to spectatorship of the news but also to track the decline of certain types of viewership of the news, and how viewership of “fake news” diverges from an older form of spectatorship.” Recommended by Alia Haddad, PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies, USC
  • The Quantum Paradox of Truthiness: Satire, Activism, and the Postmodern Condition, by James E. Caron
    Caron cites Geoffrey Baym’s concept of “discursive integration,” a concept he offers as a way of speaking about, understanding, and acting within the world defined by the permeability of form and the fluidity of content. “Discourses of news, politics, entertainment, and marketing have grown deeply inseparable; the languages and practices of each have lost their distinctiveness and are being melded into previously unimagined combinations.”Both of these authors are part of a Special Issue of the Studies in American Humor: American Satire and the Postmodern Condition. I see the problem of fake news as a historical trend where on one side news has accommodated to feed what sells and what people want to read (click bait), and on the other side as Alex mentions, we are not aware of the complexity of the Internet, its politics and interests. I also recommend Evgeny Morozov’s critiques like The Internet,” Recommended by Emilia Yang, PhD Student in Media Arts and Practice

  To see a poetic response to this hardtruth:

  Trump is our Rightful Internet President
• 1 2019-06-26T03:29:43-07:00 Trump is our Rightful Internet President 6 gallery 2020-02-17T01:00:29-08:00

   

  Trump is always on the internet.
  Trump is on Twitter always lying.
  He cheated on his wives and he is in office?
  Trump does not tell the truth and God will judge his heart.
  Why doesn't Trump man up and tell the truth?
  How dare you Trump, cover up your thighs?
  You are a lying, adulterous man who broke one of the Ten Commandments. it's Thou shalt not commit adultery.
  Trump you must confess on what you did.
  If you don't confess your sin how will you live yourself?
  Trump you can't handle the truth.
  
  By Maria Z
  
  

  This poem is a response to hardtruth #3:

  #3: Trump is our rightful internet president