If you saw the title to this and thought, the internet, then we should talk.

Twitter this morning. Twitter: my go-to source for random entertainment and amusing debate. For memes and schemes and the least-informed opinions on the planet. (I stay off Facebook, they aren't getting my 'real name'.) I know who I follow, and why: I check their bonafides. Even then I see things no mortal ever dared to dream before, as Mr Poe would have had it.

Again: Twitter this morning.

• An Anglican historian whose sudden insight into the history of US disestablishment sent me scurrying through the scholarship.
• Another handbags-at-ten-paces debate about 'men'/'not all men'. Ignored.
• Another argument about what Jesus looked like. Amusing pictures.
• The posting of a thoughtful blog post about a very questionable choice of examination passage in Latin.
• A plaintive lament from Carl Bovis the bird photographer that 'nobody's reading my blog, and I made it free!' Please go and read Carl's Cornwall blog. It's full of really nice bird pics. If you're reading this, you like bird pics, because we have a lot of them.

And etc. Twitter is an ever-flowing stream of anecdotes, tips, insightful comments, and egregious misinformation. It is endlessly entertaining because it is made up of people. Yes, some of those people are proof that somewhere, a village is missing its idiot. Others are delightful. What they are not – individually or collectively – is an authoritative source about anything.

Yes, I tend to use Twitter to keep track of 'what's happening now.' It doesn't mean I believe the report. If, suddenly, a certain place is trending, I check to see what the trend is about. Do I believe all the wild rumours that are flying? I do not. I search elsewhere for more reliable information.

Once upon a time, I was engaged in writing a set of lessons for US high schoolers which aimed at training them in the skill of 'deconstruction'. The aim was to get kids to be able to look at an advert, for example, and tell things about what it was trying to make them believe about reality.

Here's an example.

Notice that the man is camping – a more common occurrence in 1898 than now. Also, back then, campers didn't have all of those fancy inventions that the glampers have. They called it 'roughing it', because that's what it was. Notice the tent, which didn't open with one flick of the wrist like that thing you saw in the catalogue. And that pot? That's a coffee pot, kids. Which is a step up from how the cowboys did it – they didn't bother carrying a coffee pot around. They used a skillet.

The pick and shovel in the photo hints that this man might be a prospector. In 1898, that might mean he was in Alaska or the Canadian Yukon, looking for gold. A romantic but not entirely practical undertaking. Well, at least he will be clean. Look! His soap floats! He won't lose it in the water – unless that's a river, in which case he should pay attention, lest it float downstream.

A side note: Ivory Soap does float. And that's still important in some parts of the world. I know people who put homemade washcloths and bars of Ivory Soap in gift parcels to send overseas. People who regularly bathe in natural bodies of water have said it was just the thing.

We taught the students to ask themselves certain questions.

• Who made this? Who paid for it?
• What is the goal of the advert? What does the producer want you to think or do after seeing this?
• Who would benefit from this advert?
• What associations are the advertisers trying to get you to make with this product?
• How could you check the veracity of the advert's claims?

I picked this picture because it's relatively innocuous. Our deconstruction lessons often touched on more egregious examples of propaganda: ones that had unpleasant agendas involving race and gender, for example.

Deconstruction is a useful skill, and good to teach just in case the kids haven't learned it yet. Of course h2g2ers already know this. The next step is harder, though: finding good sources to verify or debunk the wild claims that bombard us daily. Sometimes it seems that we're being asked to be experts on more subjects than we care to learn about, just to avoid being led around by the nose by bad actors with agendas. Welcome to the 21st Century, folks.

But we'll talk about that another day. In the meantime, go get yourself some Ivory Soap and watch it float. Don't go prospecting, though: it's a mug's game.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

29.04.24 Front Page

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