We are in an age of witchcraft hysteria

Ya’ll need to read Marshall McLuhan before you start posting on LinkedIn (I am available for children’s parties)

Please don’t read the headline of this post and misunderstand me. I am partial to a bit of witchy core—the aesthetic and the embrace of whimsy and cosy magic. I rewatch Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman fight off an abusive boyfriend every year around Halloween. What I am talking about is a repeat of the hysteria, misinformation, and conspiracy theories that proliferated after the last major shift in the mechanics of communication.

I recently listened to the series Like and Subscribe: How YouTube Changed the World on BBC Radio 4. (It's very good, BTW.) During one episode, the host, Sophia Smith Galer, interviewed well-known content creator Hank Green, who commented that we are amid a “Gutenberg Moment.”

Tik Tok clip here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNd6M4UKu/

A Gutenberg moment refers to an abrupt change in the mechanics of communications, calling to the publication of the Gutenberg Bible in the 1450s, which introduced the world to movable type or the printing press.

The printing press freed the written word from the constraints of institutional control, which was the Roman Catholic Church at that time in Europe. The Gutenberg moment is often celebrated. Who doesn’t cheer progress and freedom, right?

However, that “moment” is often misunderstood. The printing press didn’t usher in a period of enlightenment and intellectual discourse. That era would not appear for another 250 years. No, what Guterberg’s invention heralded, almost immediately, was a period of widespread fantastical conspiracies, persecutions, and conflict. From the 1450s to around the 1700s, a widespread hysteria that Devil worshipers and witches were causing havoc caused quite a few people, the majority of whom were women, to be hunted, accused, and executed. This period also saw religious schisms, inquisitions, and the burning of heretics – the definition of who was exactly a heretic depended on which side of an egg you choose to crack first.

Now, this timeline I am laying out does flirt dangerously close to the causation/correlation fallacy. The Black Death, religious wars, and a general lack of education also contributed to the witchcraft obsession. However, the availability of a quicker, cheaper, more democratic mechanism to disseminate information did nothing to stem this tide.

The world wouldn’t hear from Isaac Newton, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson until the 18th century. This period, the Age of Enlightenment, as it is known in history circles, established trusted institutions and academies that offered education and verified information to the public. Universities proliferated, and the established, printed newspaper was introduced to Western civilisation.

A free press was so important to the founders of the United States that it is mentioned in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the new country's written constitution. You could say that journalism is the only job protected by the US Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I commented on a LinkedIn post last week, so of course, I started thinking about the ramifications of the past 500 years of human discourse.

Now, I decided a while ago not to insert myself into someone else’s post, just because I got a bee in my bonnet. (Oh boy, did I get a bee in my bonnet over a comment thread on this one.) But in my defense, I was invited to comment first.

I couldn’t leave well enough alone and stopped what I was doing to answer this comment:

“… user-generated content is replacing PR and influencers.” (I thought “influencers” was supposed to be “user-generated content”…anyhooo) “When a 3rd person tells positively about your product. That's what real credibility looks like

I probably shouldn’t have read it this way. I had commented that quotes from product users were more valuable to journalists than quotes from the product developers. But, still, my first thought was, why would so-called “user-generated content” outside the professional media filter be considered somehow more “credible”? This, for me, inches very close to the idea that experts, research, verified facts, and truths should be held in suspicion or on equal footing with some post you saw on social media from a podcaster, neighbour, celebrity, or random stranger.

Look, unless you are inciting violence, no one should be banned from posting on social media. But there is a difference between your uncle Joe, who does his own research and posts it on Facebook, or a podcaster who just has guests with different views on and a trained journalist whose story has to go through editorial approval, research, multiple interviews, fact checks, sub edits, and sometime even legal reviews before it ever gets published on these same social media channels we all need to share our content on.

My LinkedIn rant was met with comments that generally said, “Yes, Liz, but media trust is decreasing...” and “mainstream media are not doing themselves any favours…”

Ok, why is media trust decreasing, then? Please cite examples? Don’t get me wrong; people are humans, and mistakes are made daily in every industry, even in reputable newspapers. But please, for the love of PETE, tell me when mainstream media has deliberately spread misinformation or untruths or unearned praise for political or commercial reasons?

No, that shit is spread by “user generated content” that is weaponised, nefariously created, and not bound by the sort of rules, ethics or procedures that most professional media is bound by.

All of this is spread through the availability of “a quicker, cheaper, more democratic mechanism to disseminate information.” The printing press is now the internet. Despite the lack of desire to actually publicly burn people at the stake in 21st-century Europe, society has reacted to an abrupt change in communication mechanisms in much the same way as a 15th-century English peasant.

Some of you will read this and think, “Come on, Liz. This is just fintech content. Calm down.”

But we live in very dangerous times, and the rot is everywhere. If I see one more LinkedIn post that is clearly an opinion treated as investigative journalism by commentators, I will scream. I have had to explain to freelancers that their opinion is not the same as fact. For example, you may feel that traditional banks don’t serve the SME market; it may be considered conventional wisdom, but you can’t just print that without evidence or sourcing. An article created by someone with journalism training will verify that statement with quotes, citations, case studies, statistics … you know, actual verifiable facts.

Journalists show people things, they don’t tell them.

I am not letting traditional media off the hook, mind you. Almost my entire career, I have been told to ignore the new media channels in favour of the established ones.

Why do you need a website?

Don’t post news on the website, save it for the newsletter.

Stop breaking news on Twitter, save it for the website.

Podcasts are a waste of time.

All of these things have been said to me by bosses.

Misinformation, weaponised propaganda, and conspiracy theories have flourished on social channels because those whose content is bound by ethics and rules turned up their noses and sneered at that medium for years. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that arena had to be filled with content from somewhere.

That “somewhere” ended up being “user-generated content” posted on tech sites that hide behind the assertion that they are “just a platform.” Platforms bear no responsibility to the viewers or the posters and are not responsible for the consequences of whatever is posted on the site.

We now live in that cowardly, immature, and dangerous business model.

I don’t want to wait 250 years for a new era to fix communication this time.

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Because it seems I can’t let a week go by without another event rant, I will share the latest disaster. But don't worry, fintech is let off the hook this time!

All over TikTok (yes, I know I have a problem), people posted about a fantasy author’s event in Baltimore in the US that was billed as a black tie ball with thousands of attendees. The event called A Million Lives Book Festival started trending on social media as “the Fyre Festival of book festivals.” (Watch the documentary for those who forgot the entertaining, for those watching from afar, debacle that was the Fyre Festival.)

Watch the TikToks, read the article, and sympathise with the dozens of authors swindled out of money (although the organisers have posted that they will issue refunds). However, these extreme examples only serve to highlight my number one rule of events:

YOU CANNOT JUST THROW AN EVENT TOGETHER

Events require planning, skill, maturity, and experience. Just because you have attended an event in the past does not mean you have any idea of the complexity involved. (Please read my “Would you like toilets?” story.)

Go forth and spread joy. Remember to question everything you read on the internet, no matter where it comes from, and the movie Practical Magic is good to rewatch any time of the year.

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It could only be this song for the musical finale.