"We live in a post-factual world."

[greenmedic88]

Great post.

I find myself often thinking sarcastically "not true, takes less than a minute to debunk, but hey; it's okay because we live in a post factual world."

Kind of like Obama's America where Americans were living a post racial United States.

How did that work out?

In the case of our current post factual world, more than ever, the onus of fact checking has shifted from media sources who can no longer be trusted thanks to the erosion of their relevance in terms of viewership/readership that resulted in the polarization of the media via outside monetary influence. They still need ad revenue and outside industry support to keep the presses running. In some cases, media sources just like money because they feel entitled to it or they just want more stuff. Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't we taste a taste too.

So, now it's upon the reader/viewer to verify sources, most of which are either not equipped to do because they are used to being fed information that they accept as the truth, or not capable of doing because they are the victims or beneficiaries of their own polarized biases.

Those who are capable on the other hand, can pick and choose sources and data (VGC users should be no strangers to cherry picked data used by select opinions) or hey; even completely make up data or narratives to explain incidents. This is far more insidious than the gullible fool who simply states the sky is falling because an apple fell off a tree and hit them on the head.

So no, we do not live in a post factual world.

We live in a world in which false, fabricated and deliberately misleading information (imaginary tales are information too) will be presented as "fact" by those who would plot to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.