Rex Sorgatz - Encyclopedia of Misinformation: A Compendium of Imitations, Spoofs, Delusions, Simulations, Counterfeits, Impostors, Illusions, Confabulations. Conspiracies & Miscellaneous Fakery

FOR MICHELLE,
WHO IS THE OPPOSITE OF THIS BOOK

Facts are stubborn things.

JOHN ADAMS

Facts are stupid things.

RONALD REAGAN

Facts are lonely things.

DON DELILLO, Libra

I dont know where the artificial stops and the real starts.

ANDY WARHOL

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesnt go away.

PHILIP K. DICK

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets

Encyclopedia.
Laugh at it pityingly for being quaint and old-fashioned. Even so: thunder against it.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas

Several months before this book was published, a curious advertisement started to appear on the streets and subways of New York City. In the shape of a poster, the ad presented a simple apple, and below that, a caption that waxed rhapsodically, like a childhood fable:

This is an apple.

Some people might try to tell you that its a banana.

They might scream banana, banana, banana.

Or put banana in all caps.

You might even start to believe that this is a banana.

But its not.

This is an apple.

FACTS FIRST

At the bottombelow the fruit, past the winsome prose poem and the earnest sloganappeared the logo for the product being promoted: CNN. If something can be both sorta genius and kinda dumb at the same time, it might be this ad campaign.

Undoubtedly, the message was crafted for its political moment. Under ceaseless partisan and economic assault, the mainstream media had been showing signs of duress for decades. But the presidential administration had been particularly relentless, not only rebuking specific news outlets and denigrating reporters by name, but screaming fake news! to every exurban cul-de-sac that would repeat the signal. Facing the spread of misinformation, some marketer at CNN probably conjured the zany scheme to defend the media against the raiding barbarians withpresto!an advertising campaign. Given the state of the media industry, and the public battle being waged over basic facts, it was easy to sympathize with their plight. Until, that is, you realized the crux of the message behind the campaign: some people think apples are bananas.

Yes, its true, the framing of the message accidentally exposed an implicit media elitism (they see bananas, but not you), and sure, the campaign seemed to imply that a dire epistemological meltdown could be resolved with the same crafty sloganeering that engineered Think Different or Just Do It! But behind all the convoluted rhetoric about the ownership of truth, a deeper concern stewed. Whether consciously or not, the campaign recalled another iconic image/text juxtaposition:

Long before cable news declared this is an apple, the surrealist painter Ren Magritte cut a more counterintuitive message with the dictum this is not a pipe. Images, for Magritte, are not what they appear, or at the very least, words and pictures are out of sync. The very title of the painting, THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES , is unequivocal on its attitude toward representation. Though separated from modern mass media by nearly a century, the painting still whispers to us today: Images are elusive, language is fragmentary, the news is an imperfect simulation, and the media ranks presentation over information, entertainment over data. Maybe the apple really is a banana.

During politically polarized moments, contrasting these images can be precarious. Facts are a contested battleground, now more than ever. This book will not pretend to resolve the stalemate, but it will, hopefully, outline its vector through history and provide some space to consider how deception, manipulation, and subterfuge function in our society. We will try to separate apples from bananas, but any pomegranates discovered along the way will be joyfully devoured.

Inside this compendium you will find nearly 300 encyclopedic entries, many of which couldwith some brusque editingappear in one of those hefty reference tomes produced by prestigious university lexicographers. But this is not exactly that kind of anthology.

The example above, in which an iconic surrealist painting marinates with a recent advertising campaign, is a decent sample of the contents herein. Plainspoken descriptions of dense subject matter can be found here, but this is not precisely a technical manual. This reference book is less interested in imposing strict definitions than in investigating how misinformation vexes and confounds. These pages contain blips of ideas of a more ambiguous nature, with tables, charts, and illustrations that provoke as much as elucidate. Interspersed throughout are dozens of thought experiments, a slew of aphorisms, a few puzzles, some secret messages, and footnotes up the wazoo. There are two short stories, a few imagined interviews, a play, a product review, and an obituary. The Platonic dialogue at the end ( ZENOS PARADOX ) reads like a desperate ploy to sell a Rick and Morty spec script. (Can you hear me now, Dan Harmon?)

Why the kitchen-sink treatment? Because, lets face it, normal reference books are usually kinda boring. But more significantly, when the subject is misinformation, one needs a little subterfuge to knead the mental dough. This is a wily subject, cutting through the distant past and the very modern present, science and society, history and philosophy. Circumnavigating the misinformation globe from diverse angles might help us discover new lands.

In that spirit, another narrative contrivance will now be tested: the author interview. If this were the internet, we might imitate a Reddit AMA, but because you dished out 20 frogskins for this regal tome, a more classy rendering is due. Let us pretend, momentarily, that Terry Gross has extended an invitation into her radio studio to discuss this compendium.

Welcome to the show.

Delighted to be here. It is a dream come true to be on Fresh Air.

You call this an encyclopedia. Is it really a reference book?

Dang, Terry. Throwing shade already?

Its true, this book is a deception, or at least a contradiction. Encyclopedias are collections of information, but this is a collection of its opposite: deception, propaganda, and bad data.