23 June 2009: "Who is the more authentic victim of violence?"

This post is about Pravda. Carles examines the current media landscape and the manner in which it disseminates news, particularly the popular notion that so-called citizen journalism will supplant the traditional press establishment, which has become moribund and superfluous. By conflating the murder of an Iranian protester with the assault of a onetime independent celebrity gossipmonger, Carles suggests that without institutions determining what should be considered significant -- a bureau of newsification, perhaps -- a dangerous flattening of all events into trivia ensues: "Feel like the downside of ’social media’ is that u can’t really tell what is important, and what is just a meme, since it is on the internet." Everything and nothing becomes worthy of our limited attention; left to our own devices we try to generate parameters for what to comprehend, but these are doomed to be woefully inadequate, generally misguided, hopelessly skewed by our desire to flatter or distract ourselves. We are prone to generate purely quantitative criteria of what is significant, as Carles illustrates in this account of Perez Hilton's alleged importance: "From what I understand, millions of people read his site every day, and this makes him possibly more important than most news sources. Basically, his brand is more important than ur local news and pitchfork combined. Sorta weird 2 think about." And to further emphasize the point, he likens the editing the news to indie rock: "It’s kinda weird how news is becoming like indie music–we can’t tell the difference between ‘whatz hyped’ and ‘what is actually important/relevant.’" Relativism reigns supreme as long-tail ethics rule the day and the individual as niche demographic becomes an institution of its own.

But Carles pushes beyond this fairly standard account of postmodernism pernicious effects on civic society. He highlights the details of the Perez Hilton incident -- a potentially slanderous remark made by a self-styled citizen journalist prompts a violent vigilante response. This mirrors at the micro level the macro story of the Iran rioting -- a potentially fraudulent election conducted by a de facto autocratic regime prompts vigilante street actions. What Carles is suggesting by interrogating the "authenticity" of violence is that the climate in which violence takes place is ultimately more significant than who are the specific perpetrators, and that victimhood is more of a speech act -- a matter of who controls the media -- than the consequence of violence. There are no authentic victims without authenticated news outlets. No heroes without Pravda.