Living our own Dark Ages
Those years from the Fall of the Roman empire to the birth of the Italian Renaissance from 500 to 1500 AD (these are estimates, of course) have always impacted our understanding of histories and civilizations. Popularly known as the “Dark Ages,” a term that makes use of the light-and-darkness binary, said periodization has undergone modern and postmodern readings. one of the main critiques around the Dark Ages situate the shadowed days around Christianity vis-a-vis what historians define as the “apogee” of Muslim civilization.
Be that as it may, the Dark Ages as a period is an appropriate trope for what is happening to our present society. More specifically, we can call to mind the so-called “Digital Dark Age,” first mentioned, according to popular historians, in a conference by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions in 1997. The term refers to the unimpeded obsolescence of corrupted hardware and software, the disappearance of files due to shift in formats, and similar factors.
Transposed, however, to local conditions, the Dark Ages as a period becomes a trope for what we as a people have become with our access to technology, the social media and the ubiquitous mobile phones. Let us not even include here laptops and tablets for those devices are limited in distribution according to economic class and distinction. Focus on the handy cellphones and witness how an individual is immediately connected or disconnected to truth as we know it and facts as we recognize facts and realities as we can verify the real.
Remember that ad in the ’90s how the Internet has connected us all? Well, we are seeing the dark days, when social media is now threatening to disconnect us all from each other.
Truths among the general populace have become relative, or are you not aware of this yet? Facts are
nothing but bits and pieces of information that, by the sheer force of popular use, can be determined in terms of quantity rather than quality. The more you place online names, events, moods, images and the more they are passed on from one phone to another then the more that
thing becomes factual. That information can be disinformation but due to sheer volume of dissemination, there is no chance one can disaggregate the positive from the negative, the “in” from the “dis-in.” All things being equal online, everything
is information.
What happens to the truth? It becomes malleable. It discloses itself easily to manipulation and there may not be even malice in its distortion. In fact, among the users of these online truths, distortion is not done with malice as it is imbued with unfettered imagination the way artists manufacture creative imagination.
From the information to the truth, there is a small jump to reality and it does not require a leap of faith but a break from belief. Out there, we can say anything so long as we can imagine. Out there we can generate knowledge. Man and Woman have not only left the Garden, but have no need of Paradise.
It is terrifying out there but let me bring down the discourse to bite-size views.
Scattered online are countless student assignments on Philippine society and culture. Do a cursory check and be shocked at the wrong data proliferating. The factual error can start from aggressive claims. For example, if an individual posts a particular claim, another person will share that and the error proliferates. It is not true therefore to say that so long as the students have access to the Internet, they can have a supplement to their lessons. These are the minor online incidents.
More terrible events are happening online and these are the newfound abilities of ordinary individuals to create their own videos and some such things. It is, to put it mildly, a free-for-all. No regulation and no parental guidance exist online.
Take the weather reports, for example. Five years ago, there was the Pagasa and other weather bureaus referred to by TV and radio newscasters. Presently, self-made weathermen have transformed themselves into prophet of dooms, exaggerating reports by splicing videos from varied sources without citing their sources. You sense almost this glee as they report on how cities are sinking and how floods are “drowning” cities. With no proper training, their reports are not only ungrammatical but also dangerously simplistic in catastrophic warnings, with names of places misspelled.
Some have even appropriated the line, Breaking News, a tag that attracts viewership. Where the viewer has the critical eye, then these f lights of fancy can remain as such, soaring stupidity for all to view online. However, that is where things begin: the lack or absence of critical eyes.
Against the helpless pleadings of a few enlightened persons, a series of videos featuring this young girl dressed skimpily, sometimes in swimsuits, mimicking the moves of a model or beauty queen, persist. Given the costuming, the poor girl appears like a freak, her hair big and her face all dolled up. She is, according to one complaining, a pedophile’s dream. Sexualized and all. And yet for every complaint, more plaudits appear on the thread. They are congratulating the girl’s parents for developing her into a future beauty queen.
Even online selling has found a new life, with young boys and girls selling shorts and shirts appearing as well in adult sites where they are performing sexual acts for paying clients. I guess this ups the hits their marketing sites receive.
Regular fare in the social participation in the social media are the numerous vlogs that, for many unexplained reasons, appear to generate fandom despite the fact that nothing seems to happen within those few minutes of shared experience. There are vloggers who do shout-outs, reminding you of the radio days when callers would endlessly dedicate a particular song to some 10 or 20 listeners. There is a vlogger who eats with his hands while waiting for viewers to send him “stars.”
And if you hit the greatest point of boredom, you can always try vlogs that show ingrown nails being pulled —blood, pus and fungus included for entertainment purposes. Dark Ages, indeed.