I spend too much time on X.
If globalism gave us anything to enjoy and despise at the same time, it is X. Social media was sold as the utopic digital global village, but X proves otherwise. Here it is at our fingertips, and we love to hate it. Some defend it with all they have while others want to take it away.
To be honest, X is more a saloon or a bar full of off-duty drunken sailors than a place for intellectual exchange. Where else can you find thousands of threads on cats? And let’s not forget the special corners for the weird and disturbed. Like in a real bar, there are conversations on investment, sports, the meaning of life and many other things, but everyone is talking at once, drunk or sober, happy or depressed, alone or in a group.
If you spend as much time as I do on X, you get that happy inebriated feeling for the first few minutes. By minute five or seven, the headache sets in, and within half an hour, the headache turns into a hangover. And if you’re like me, soon you’re as confused as you would be in a bar at 2 am. There’s a good reason for this. X causes illusion overload. Like after several drinks, you question what is real. Everyone knows that just because someone posts an opinion or thought on X doesn’t mean it’s the truth. AI has spiked the drinks somewhat, making it harder to tell the shadows from the guests, but I’ve noticed something extraordinary happening. The unreal is transforming into the real. What is illusory on X can easily become someone’s reality.
If you read Miss Trust, you already know that our team works in the real by practicing the principles of critical thinking, but what if the real isn’t real anymore? In other words, what if what we think is real truly isn’t? Isn’t it amazing that a digital rumor can cause a real-world stock market dip or bank run. The concept of post-truth suggests that our reality is now shaped by emotions and the repetition of half-truths that distort our views of what is real. Are our conversations on X projecting our reality or is reality being warped by X?
Let me pour you a few examples. Pull up a stool.
In March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank vanished in less than 48 hours. Not because of a quarterly report or a regulator’s knock at the door, although those existed, but because the X tech community started talking. They posted about pulling their deposits.
Other depositors saw the posts, opened their banking apps, and tapped a few buttons. The X conversation about the bank started spiking on the morning of March 9th. The bank was gone the next day. The 1930s Depression-era bank run took weeks, and you needed to get your hat and walk to the bank. This one took a long lunch, and all that was needed were thumbs.
Then there was the Pentagon fire hoax. In May 2023, a verified account pretending to be Bloomberg News posted an AI-generated image showing black smoke billowing near the Pentagon. It looked plausible. Russian state media and Indian television both picked it up. The S&P 500 dipped briefly before officials confirmed nothing had happened. The real Bloomberg News called it possibly the first time an AI-generated picture moved the market. By the time everyone learned that the building wasn’t on fire, it didn’t matter. Trades were settled.
We used to assume things we saw online at least reflected reality, the way a bar mirror reflects the room. It may have been distorted by smoke and the angle of the light but ultimately it was a reflection of something real. What I’m describing here is the opposite. The mirror is now generating the room and creating the shadows. The goal of this new series is not factchecking, nor is it to identify truths, half-truths, or lies. We’re here to uncover how the tavern’s shadows are becoming the world’s realities by observing what the global village people, the pundits, the theorists, the experts and the skeptics are saying. This adventure will take us into a foray of subjects and ideas.
If you have the courage, come along with us. Every great adventure starts in a bar or tavern. Hans Solo met Obi Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine. Neo first met Trinity in the goth nightclub in the Matrix, and Gandalf began the journey to Erebor when he chanced upon Thorin Oakenshield at the Prancing Pony Inn.