The Honest Broker : TED GIOIA article :NOV 07, 2024
CLICK LINK FOR ARTICLE
Excerpted from article:
Here’s the Google analysis of the use of the word fake in texts over the last 150 years.
Fake is our leading candidate for word of the century. It captures almost everything relevant now in a single syllable.
You have to give Susan Sontag some credit, the inflection point in accelerating fakeness happened almost exactly when she complained about the collapse in seriousness in the mid-1990s.
Here’s the scariest part of the story: Most of this is by design.
Our culture is now obsessed with deception and misdirection—and it’s not just on the movie screen anymore. You see it everywhere, from cosplay conventions to bands wearing masks to the misguided virtual reality mania.
Lifestyles are increasingly about pretending. Your real self stays in hiding, while your fake self gets presented in the most spectacular way on social media and other digital platforms.
Never before in history has authenticity been in such short supply. That’s so much the case, that the very word authenticity is mocked.
Portrait of Marie-Antoinette by the French painter Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun