It was an eyebrow-raising headline even for Facebook, which has no shortage of them.
“NAACP Officially Endorses Trump for 2020 Election,” it read. The person who shared it had copied and pasted part of the story into the body of the post, a rambling quote attributed to an NAACP spokesperson. It talked about members being fooled into believing that “Trump will put you in chains,′ but eventually realizing the president “is a true friend of the black community.”
Having read just days before an official press release from the NAACP that applauded Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to proceed with articles of impeachment against Trump, I smelled something fishy.
It didn’t take long to find out what. All I had to do was click on the link.
The story is the product of a website that offers “satire for Flat Earthers, Trumpsters and Y’all Qaeda” and is stored in a folder labeled “Conservative Fan Fiction.” The NAACP mentioned in the story is the Norman Association for the Advancement of Coloring People, and the president is identified as one Donald Juniper Trump.
A few observations:
For one, I mourn the state of satire, a noble literary genre that has fallen on hard times from the heights of practitioners like Jonathan Swift and his “Modest Proposal,” or even Mad magazine, for heaven’s sake.
I’m not even certain what was being satirized here. The supposed naivete of some minorities who believe Trump actually cares about them? The NAACP for speaking out against Trump? The GOP for standing by their man in a way that puts Loretta Lynn to shame? Democrats for seeking impeachment so close to an election year?
I don’t know, and I’m not sure the author does either. The piece commits a cardinal sin of satire because it does not enlighten readers in any way, does not hold any one person or group up to ridicule, and isn’t funny.
I suspect “satire” is a cover the website uses in an attempt to legitimize what is nothing more than a propaganda machine. Readers aren’t meant to go beyond the headline, but rather just forward it, like some maniacal chain letter on steroids.
So a bigger concern is how a piece like this can quickly be weaponized by people who don’t read carefully or who support a cause at the expense of objective truth.
This is a problem across all social media, but nowhere more than on Facebook, where the policy regarding political ads is to have no policy, to let content flow freely to 2 billion worldwide users (although the site may begin flagging political content as not fact-checked, which is at least a start).
At no time in history has it been more important for readers to be discerning consumers of information than in an era when every basement-dwelling, chain-smoking conspiracy theorist has access to worldwide publishing at the touch of a button — and when more than a few of these people have started companies with no goal other than to obfuscate the truth and stump on behalf of a particular person or cause, no matter how spurious or injurious to the nation.
Despite all President Trump’s grousing about supposedly left-leaning news organizations, the truth is that any bias demonstrated by these media giants is minuscule compared to the slant offered by far-right-leaning — and, to be fair, fair-left-leaning — organizations that spin more stories than a washing machine spins clothes.
(Of course, if there is an actual hell, then a special circle is reserved for Fox News, where an uber-pernicious slant coupled with a huge budget and a sheen of respectability has done more to divide this country than any other single entity, Trump included.)
To the credit of my Facebook friend, he removed the faux-NAACP post shortly after I alerted him to its questionable nature. But that was only after it had been shared by several other Facebook users.
An old saying in the news industry is that the correction never catches up to the mistake. It’s never been more true, especially in situations where the mistake is intentional and malicious.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Friday, December 6, 2019
Excessive exclamations of enthusiasm ... whatever
Squint really hard and you will see a white flag fluttering over this column.
After a long and valiant battle, I am surrendering in my war against exclamation points. Longtime readers may recall that I’ve fought against their overuse for years, at least since 2012, when I wrote about how I allotted only two per semester, per student, in all written communication.
“Use them wisely,” I intoned, “because once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
I was fighting a losing battle even then against the forces of excessive enthusiasm. “I have to go home and shovel snow!” is not worthy of an exclamation point, even when people love winter.
Ditto “I hate broccoli!,” which looks silly with an exclamation point after the lowercase “i,” like a gremlin in the keyboard flipped the letter upside down and typed it again, although the enthusiasm would also be misplaced if the exclamation point followed “carrot” or “cabbage.” Some preferences don’t merit excitement, no matter how heartfelt.
Since I wrote that column, I have received countless emails — okay, six — where the writer starts by saying, “Please excuse me, but ...” or some variation, followed by information that ends with an exclamation point. Some of that news has been genuinely exciting, such as a child accepted to a prestigious school, and merited exclamation points. Other news, not so much. But who am I to judge?
My allocation of exclamation points has always been persnickety, anyway. Some semesters, in a rush of generosity, I dole out four or five. The point was to make them special so that they didn’t end up littering the compositional highway like so many McDonald’s wrappers.
What I failed to reckon with is the continual adaptation of language to new ways of communicating. Take, for instance, text messages.
Audiences understand punctuation differently in these situations than in more formal types of writing. A period at the end of a text can come across as cold and rude. (One study a few years back found that texts ending in a period were deemed “insincere.”)
Texts ending without a period apparently leave the door open for additional communication. Even a one-word text like “No” can be perceived differently with or without a period. Students tell me they are less likely to continue a texting conversation with somebody whose responses end in periods because that signals the person no longer wants to engage.
Exclamation points are a way of showing excitement is situations where the writer’s intent is hard to determine. They are, in effect, the precursors of emojis, which do the same. Exclamation points began as the Latin “io,” which means “exclamation of joy.” In a space-saving move, the “o” became a period and slid beneath the “i.” (The same consolidation occurred when “questio,” or “question,” was shortened to “qo” and then to today’s question mark.)
So if I’m so worried readers will miss my irony, cynicism, eye-rolling or whatever when I write “Way to go, Insert Imbecilic Politician Here” on Twitter that I add the appropriate emoji, then why am I so uptight about the exclamation point?
I guess I shouldn’t be. So I’m not anymore.
Don’t get me wrong. Exclamation points still don’t belong in formal writing, look ridiculous in newspapers, magazines and presidential tweets, and have no business in novels or short stories unless they are part of dialogue, and even then only sparingly.
Make the words do the emotional heavy-lifting, not the punctuation.
But in less formal communication, let the exclamation points take flight as often as writers like, provided they take into account the effect so much unbridled joy will have on more sober-minded audiences.
In the saccharin-sweet world of writing, I’m still a diabetic. But for those who aren’t, you have my blessing to rain down exclamation points with abandon. Not that you needed my approval — and not that you asked for it.
Here’s the place where, if I were pandering, I would say something clever and end with an exclamation point. But I’m not, so I won’t.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
After a long and valiant battle, I am surrendering in my war against exclamation points. Longtime readers may recall that I’ve fought against their overuse for years, at least since 2012, when I wrote about how I allotted only two per semester, per student, in all written communication.
“Use them wisely,” I intoned, “because once they’re gone, they’re gone.”
I was fighting a losing battle even then against the forces of excessive enthusiasm. “I have to go home and shovel snow!” is not worthy of an exclamation point, even when people love winter.
Ditto “I hate broccoli!,” which looks silly with an exclamation point after the lowercase “i,” like a gremlin in the keyboard flipped the letter upside down and typed it again, although the enthusiasm would also be misplaced if the exclamation point followed “carrot” or “cabbage.” Some preferences don’t merit excitement, no matter how heartfelt.
Since I wrote that column, I have received countless emails — okay, six — where the writer starts by saying, “Please excuse me, but ...” or some variation, followed by information that ends with an exclamation point. Some of that news has been genuinely exciting, such as a child accepted to a prestigious school, and merited exclamation points. Other news, not so much. But who am I to judge?
My allocation of exclamation points has always been persnickety, anyway. Some semesters, in a rush of generosity, I dole out four or five. The point was to make them special so that they didn’t end up littering the compositional highway like so many McDonald’s wrappers.
What I failed to reckon with is the continual adaptation of language to new ways of communicating. Take, for instance, text messages.
Audiences understand punctuation differently in these situations than in more formal types of writing. A period at the end of a text can come across as cold and rude. (One study a few years back found that texts ending in a period were deemed “insincere.”)
Texts ending without a period apparently leave the door open for additional communication. Even a one-word text like “No” can be perceived differently with or without a period. Students tell me they are less likely to continue a texting conversation with somebody whose responses end in periods because that signals the person no longer wants to engage.
Exclamation points are a way of showing excitement is situations where the writer’s intent is hard to determine. They are, in effect, the precursors of emojis, which do the same. Exclamation points began as the Latin “io,” which means “exclamation of joy.” In a space-saving move, the “o” became a period and slid beneath the “i.” (The same consolidation occurred when “questio,” or “question,” was shortened to “qo” and then to today’s question mark.)
So if I’m so worried readers will miss my irony, cynicism, eye-rolling or whatever when I write “Way to go, Insert Imbecilic Politician Here” on Twitter that I add the appropriate emoji, then why am I so uptight about the exclamation point?
I guess I shouldn’t be. So I’m not anymore.
Don’t get me wrong. Exclamation points still don’t belong in formal writing, look ridiculous in newspapers, magazines and presidential tweets, and have no business in novels or short stories unless they are part of dialogue, and even then only sparingly.
Make the words do the emotional heavy-lifting, not the punctuation.
But in less formal communication, let the exclamation points take flight as often as writers like, provided they take into account the effect so much unbridled joy will have on more sober-minded audiences.
In the saccharin-sweet world of writing, I’m still a diabetic. But for those who aren’t, you have my blessing to rain down exclamation points with abandon. Not that you needed my approval — and not that you asked for it.
Here’s the place where, if I were pandering, I would say something clever and end with an exclamation point. But I’m not, so I won’t.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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