Riddle me this, Batman: Back in the 1940s, in their downtime between boxing matches, solving murder mysteries, and fleeing from Bela Lugosi, did Muggs and Glimpy and their East Side gangsta cronies, sprawled across the tenement stoop by the newsstand, having parted with precious dimes to partake in the rollicking adventures of bizarre, newly minted superheroes like Superman, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Aquaman, Human Torch, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Arrow – did they realize at the time that they were living through a “Golden Age” of comic books?
I, Pinky Tourette, your chief historian and bottle-washer, am here to answer that question for you with a resounding fuck no. Just as their older brothers and sisters of the same era didn’t grok that they were experiencing a “Golden Age” of science fiction, with John W. Campbell ushering in a stylistic and intellectual revolution via the ABC of Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, plus Heinlein, van Vogt, et al.
Did the families huddled around the big ol’ Westinghouse in the living room, listening to Burns & Allen and Gang Busters and The Lone Ranger and The Shadow and Inner Sanctum realize they were enjoying a “Golden Age” of radio? Or later, clustered by the oval screen, squinting at Uncle Miltie and Lucy and Jack Benny and Playhouse 90 and Your Show of Shows and You Bet Your Life – were they thinking, “this is a Golden Age of TV?” The crowds flocking to see Clark Gable, Mae West, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Boris Karloff – did they sagely nod their heads in agreement that it was a “Golden Age” of Hollywood?
Actually, maybe kinda yes. Not that they called it a “Golden Age,” not that they recognized they were experiencing a FINITE PERIOD with a discernable beginning and end, but they felt it, they understood at some primal, proto-id level that there was an electric convergence taking place, a revolutionary restructuring of popular culture that was attracting creative pioneers and luminaries (plus assorted outlaws and outliers) and utterly reshaping and redefining how the masses filled their cold, empty hours.
It happens over and over again, sometimes with fanfare (the “Golden Age” of rock and roll) and sometimes on the down-low, as an ugly rumble that society does its best to ignore and belittle and shunt into a dirty cubbyhole, and only in retrospect is it acknowledged as a historically significant turning point (punk).
But whether it’s recognized at the time as a seismic cultural shift or only pegged posthumously when archivists trace back the origins of some newly codified psychoethnological movement, either way it’s only later, after the fact, that the dates are pinned, the parameters established, and the term applied: “Golden Age.”
Well, I’m here to tell you one and all, we don’t have to wait for the archaeologists and the statisticians to break out their protractors and slide-rules. We don’t have to sit idly by awaiting the pronouncements in next year’s history books. The time is now. We are at this very moment living through a “Golden Age,” and we should recognize and embrace it and appreciate its special, pungent qualities.
This, friends, is the Golden Age of misinformation.
Oh, we’ve seen misinformation on a mass scale before, certainly. In fact, we have a name for it: religion. But that’s misinformation that takes generations to take hold; eons, even. We’re in unprecedented times, when one numbskull with a Twitter account can post a drunken, incoherent rant, with autocorrect randomly replacing words, and the next thing you know, tens of thousands of regular Joes and Judys are swallowing Ivermectin and taking Borax baths. There’s something almost heroically committed about that, the same way one can marvel at the unwavering dedication and trust and blind loyalty of the masses that willingly sucked down Kool-Aid at the whim of a Jim Jones.
So enjoy it folks. The Golden Age of Misinformation won’t last forever. It will, like all golden ages, come to an end, in a watering down of content and impact as multitudes of Johnny-cum-nevers rush to join the party and cash in on the spoils, even as the initial luster fades and the public loses interest. Misinformation will become so commonplace, so mundane, so casual and ubiquitous that it simply fades into the cultural matrix and become part of the climate.
Until then, please join me in saluting the “creatives” behind this current Golden Age as they outdo themselves with absurd new rabbit holes for the masses to tumble into in their Q-nonymous pursuit of “Truth.” Not to mention Justice and the American Way. Huzzah.
Comentários