Truth in the age of bullshit (or why nobody cares about fact-checking)

Fact-checking is, undoubtedly, an important act of public service. In a world flooded by misinformation and synthetic world views, fact-checking arguably constitutes a noble endeavour, the last resistance of rigorous journalism against online entropy.

But perhaps it might be surprising to acknowledge that this need for fact-checking is not entirely new. Many outlets, in the 19th century, had already figured out that they could sell many more exemplars by tweaking the headlines, and by filling their pages with sensationalist, poor, but effective articles. Soon after, the capacity to excite and move the feelings of the public proved to be a valuable ally of economic potentates, creating a powerful and still alive symbiosis between the advertising industry and the production of content. Max Weber, in his 1919 conference, Politics as a Vocation, stated that:

"Thus far, however, our great capitalist newspaper concerns, which attained control, especially over the ‘chain newspapers,’ with ‘want ads,’ have been regularly and typically the breeders of political indifference. For no profits could be made in an independent policy; especially no profitable benevolence of the politically dominant powers could be obtained. The advertising business is also the avenue along which, during the war, the attempt was made to influence the press politically in a grand style—an attempt which apparently it is regarded as desirable to continue now. Although one may expect the great papers to escape this pressure, the situation of the small ones will be far more difficult. [...] Some of the papers were, without regard to party, precisely the notoriously worst boulevard sheets; by dropping anonymity they strove for and attained greater sales. The publishers as well as the journalists of sensationalism have gained fortunes but certainly not honor."

But to consume (yes, to consume) information is nowadays not just an answer to a fundamental need of awareness. Rather, it is a response to the constant need to take sides on an ever-growing range of issues; need into which we are lured. And as it happens, we usually strive for information not in pursuit of truth, not out of a genuine concern about the facts, but for narratives that can reaffirm who we think we are, and the vision of the world we think that, autonomously, we hold, and all this always under the guise of entertainment. A good example in these days is the so-called "debate culture" (culture wars: funny how in this process of total mental colonisation, the word "culture" appears everywhere while obliterating entire cultures with such a degree of efficiency that the conquerors of old could not even dream of) which is of course not about debating, but about specularity for its own sake. We strive to display the arguments that will increase our own public performance: the spectacle we turn ourselves into.

And because we willingly become an extension of them, memes and propaganda become an integral part in the process of understanding ourselves. We therefore become irremediably attached to them. And so we are dragged by the ideological arousal that a particular content might cause us, rather than any actual political concern. Prepaid dopamine, turns out, becomes a way more powerful tool than any ideological inquiry.

This is why fact-checking, besides its evident importance, has a relatively low societal impact: with its best intentions (and practices as well), it polices truth in a world where almost nobody cares about truth at all. In this context, Harry Frankfurt's famous book, On Bullshit, is as timely as it is accurate. Frankfurt's account of bullshit can be summarised in the following way: what characterises bullshit, its essence, is an indifference towards truth. The bullshitter is not concerned with truth and falsity as such. Instead, the bullshitter's attitude is more like bluffing: it is about social tactics, more than a concern or compromise with any particular belief. As Frankfurt himself states:

"Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth. [...]

The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. [...] The bullshitter ignores all these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

While Frankfurt does not allude to the ever-growing dimension of spectacle permeating absolutely everything around us, it is arguably one of the main reasons behind the unstoppable rise of bullshit. This explains, for instance, why it is so ineffective to fact-check the speeches - or posts - of many politicians. Because, to expose their lies to the public is, to their view, not an exposure at all. No possible embarrassment can be felt when being called a liar if you're not worried about truth at all. A showman is not a liar, it does something else. The focus is not on the poles of truth-falsity. There is no possible discussion (there is, literally, nothing to discuss about). Only the spectacularity of the public appearance remains, in which the truth-value of the statements that are uttered is arguably the least appealing feature of the whole setup. They are almost an archaic, annoying remnant of less entertaining, memeable times.

And the same goes for many influencers, sponsored outlets, and even government communications, as well as other integral parts of our digital ecosystem. The content they convey does not look to insert a particular belief. Sure, they reinforce previous biases one might have. But above all, they aim to alter the way in which you think and believe overall. Once you find a source of entertainment in propaganda, it does not really matter which particular candidate you support in a particular election. When your leisure has already been militarised, turned into painful, despotic pleasure, anything follows. At this stage, and paraphrasing Baudrillard, politics becomes reduced to just a special effect. Just the packaging in which to wrap the affective domination of the peoples.

Apropos, in his essay The Gulf War did not Take Place, Baudrillard wrote:

"Resist the probability of any image or information whatever. Be more virtual than the events themselves, do not seek to re-establish the truth, we do not have the means, but do not be duped, and to that end re-immerse the war and all information in the virtuality from whence they come".

Baudrillard calls to resistance in a moment in which the Gulf War was being pre-produced in a studio. If we name that episode of history as war, he argues, it is just because it was televised as such. War, turns out, happened mainly in the media ecosystem, rather than in a true battlefield. It not that the war did not happen: it simply didn't take place. And thus, it is the public itself, he says, the one subject to the humiliation of the images, and are submitted to their violence, in an act of "forced voyeurism".

The problem, turns out, is not just actually misinformation. It can be information itself: "at a certain speed, the speed of light, you loose even your shadow. At a certain speed, the speed of information, things loose their sense". And so, as said, Baudrillard calls to resistance. But how can we resist? For we are often presented with the dilemma of looking at the news and try to act as responsible citizens who engage with the world around them, or remaining uninformed, indifferent to it, in an attempt to preserve our mental stability. But maybe - and perhaps paradoxically -, in the age of the spectacle, to be informed requires not looking. To not look at the images that inflict a moral wound in all who are exposed to them, just as Augustine of Hippo said of the spectators in the Colosseum.

In his Confessions, Augustine tells us about Alipius, a young and virtuous man who moves to Rome in order to study law, and who will, in fact, witness Augustine's own conversion. While in Rome, Alipius assists, in spite of his initial hesitation, to a gladiator's fight in the Colosseum, moved by the pressure of his acquaintances. In the beginning, he refuses to even open his eyes, but then...

"At a certain tense moment in the fight a huge roar from the entire crowd beat upon him. He was overwhelmed by curiosity, and on the excuse that he would be prepared to condemn and rise above whatever was happening even if he saw it, he opened his eyes, and suffered a more grievous wound in his soul than the gladiator he wished to see had received in the body. He fell more dreadfully than the other man whose fall had evoked the shouting; for by entering his ears and persuading his eyes to open the noise effected a breach through which his mind—a mind rash rather than strong, and all the weaker for presuming to trust in itself rather than in you, as it should have done—was struck and brought down. As he saw the blood he gulped the brutality along with it; he did not turn away but fixed his gaze there and drank in the frenzy, not aware of what he was doing, reveling in the wicked contest and intoxicated on sanguinary pleasure. No longer was he the man who had joined the crowd; he was now one of the crowd he had joined, and a genuine companion of those who had led him there."

Not to look as a first act of internal resistance. Yes, in the avalanche of information, we do not have the means to re-establish truth. Because the implacable stream of bullshit is not just about lying to you. That is, I am afraid, too old-fashioned. It is about a perverse conjunction of entertainment and violence in which you become the battlefield itself, a battlefield for prefabricated narratives. True force that transforms you into a thing. No truth or lies left when facts become the ruins of the past. And so, policing the truth it will always be as commendable as insufficient.

I am not saying we should dispense with fact-checking. Not at all. But that obeys to an old way of thinking. Curzio Malaparte told us that the traditional policing tactics can do little in facing the new technique of the coup d'état. We witness something similar today in the cognitive sphere.

And so, the circumstances require more from us. Let us then try to reconstruct with our ever-more fragile memory how we got where we are, and how we came to adopt the positions we think are of our own making. And with the sobriety of a renovated awareness, let us strive, once again, for what is true.

Our own humanity, as Augustine witnessed, is what is at stake after all.

The idea of writing this article came during the Display City Sessions, organised by Display Europe, which took place in Belgrade, from the 18th to the 21th of May, 2025. The talk with the opportune title of "(instead of the title think why conventional fact checking doesn't work)*", by Snježana Milivojević, was particularly inspiring. This article is the result of the notes I began taking back then.