Michael Calore at Wired covers Stephen Colbert's recent democratic hi-jacking of elephant entries in Wikipedia in the name of pointed political satire [YouTube clip].
Check the links above for more info, but in a nutshell, Colbert satirized the Bush administration's ability to repeat an apparent falsehood long enough for people to begin to believe it. (Polls have repeatedly illustrated this ability.) Colbert demonstrated the technique using Wikipedia, calling on viewers to go to the "elephant" entry in Wikipedia and edit the entry to indicate elephant populations are not endangered but are, in fact, soaring. As Colbert said, if enough people agreed with the edits, they would become facts.
At last report, Wikipedia is not amused. Apparently, a least a significant fraction of Colbert's viewers thought Colbert's challenge to reality needed to be acted on.
Wikipedia scrambled to move all entries primarily about elephants to semi-protected status (meaning normal users couldn't update them). They also froze Colbert's Wikipedia account to prevent him from making further edits.
Most of the web press over Colbert's stunt focuses on the havoc this wreaked for Wikipedia (and they're right—it was a little rude), but has missed what I think is a more important issue (although Colbert, as I see it, was trying to make this point): facts are unfortunately democratic. Or wonderfully democratic, depending on how you look at it.
Having truth on your side gives you very little power in most situations. Mendel's work in genetics was initially ignored because, as Focault points out, it was not "within the truth" (dans le vrai—see, that ten-week course in French I took as a grad student eventually became useful). You can be true, but if you're outside of the socially accepted structure of truth, you're a monster. In other words, you lack Truthiness.
I'm not saying this is Good or Evil; a society earns the truths it believes.
[via Wired Monkey Bites]
Posted by johndanseven at August 1, 2006 11:19 PM | TrackBack