We live not only in a liquid modernity and in the post-truth era, where the cards of today are mixed and confused. It is no longer enough for us to surprise when we present a news story as it happened in the old journalism. Today we need more in our desire to surprise. We need to shock. The more the better. The scandal also gives profit. If in the seventeenth century, the French philosopher, René Descartes, in his method discourse, coined the famous phrase “I think therefore I am”, today reflection is not enough to confirm that we exist. We need to take a leap that can end up being deadly. Today’s motto could be “I scandalize therefore I am”.
It has been the Korean thinker Byung Chul Han who has underlined that today “debate has been replaced by scandal”, that is, whoever is capable of attracting more attention with something scandalous “will receive more touches on the Internet”. This ends, say communication experts, dragging us into a bid to see who shocks more and better. Surprise is conservative. We have the news of the world to the second through online information. They no longer surprise or excite us. We need something more substantial. This is how the news that causes scandal is born, it does not matter if it is true or false.
This explains the growth of hoaxes on social networks, of blatant lies, of the bid to see who is most scandalous and who is capable of lying better. The norms of classical information with its severe norms on the veracity of the news are being blown up. The important thing is the first impact of the surprise. It is fame built under the force of scandal.
Brazil is living these days several examples of the fever of shocking to get notoriety. One of the most renowned lawyers has appeared at a virtual professional meeting dressed in a suit and tie but instead of pants he was wearing a swimsuit. Surely that shameless image gave him more national echo than many of the defenses of illustrious personalities.
In turn, in the Flow podcast, one of the most listened to in the country to which famous personalities and politicians are invited, a real war has broken out last week. The famous presenter Monark defended that Germany had done wrong in “condemning Nazism”. He was followed by the PMB deputy Kim Kataguiri taking a further step in the desire to scandalize and defended that a Nazi party should also be created in Brazil.
They both knew that the Brazilian Constitution sentences anyone who defends Nazism and the Holocaust to several years in prison, for which the creation of a Nazi party would be unthinkable. The scandal gave the presenter and the deputy more than 200,000 interactions on social networks. If it had been a simple discussion, without scandalizing, the affirmations of the defenders of Nazism would not have attracted attention. What enriched them in visibility was the scandal produced.
Just days before, on TV Joven Pan, the commentator Adriles Jorge allowed himself, in an effort to attract attention, to make a typical Nazi gesture that launched him on the networks. Result? The conservative party, PTB, immediately offered him a position as a candidate in the next elections. As the lawyer André Masiglia, an expert in mass communication issues, commented, “getting someone’s attention today is more than just being someone”.
In the discussion about Nazism today in Brazil, it has reached the climax that the party of deputy Katiguiri, instead of reprimanding the politician for his excesses in the analysis of Nazism, has announced that he is going to prosecute those who ask for the impeachment of the politician.
Today it is known that, for example, President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 thanks to the bombardment of false news and lies that flooded the networks amplified by hundreds of robots financed by some far-right businessmen. And all of his politics today is based on his morning meetings with a group of his most fanatical supporters. In these meetings, the president dedicates himself to telling blatant lies and verbally assaulting journalists who try to ask him a compromising question, even with rude sexual phrases. And that gives him notoriety and press.
If today the important thing is to get fame at any price, nothing better than the hard and crude lie, launched without scruples, which is just the antithesis of what should be the scruple to tell the truth of the facts. Facts that may sometimes be debatable but without an explicit will when publishing them to deceive in order to shock.
Today the Spanish Nobel Prize for Literature Camilo José Cela, who was known for the strength of his irony, would laugh at the bias that certain media and internet sites have taken in order to get followers and money. In the 1980s, Cela passed through Rome, invited by the Spanish Embassy. We correspondents knew the acid exits that he used to give to the questions that were asked of him. Back then, mobile phones and social networks did not yet exist, and although we journalists sought to surprise with news that others did not have, the fever of wanting to “shock” at any cost did not yet exist. In a break, during a dinner, a Spanish correspondent dared to ask Cela what it would take to be able to “surprise” given the excess of news released by radio and television at that time. The Nobel, with his classic baritone voice and burlesque nature, replied: “Well, man, for example, walking around the Plaza de España, in front of the embassy to the Holy See, with a pink bow tied around your balls.”
Faced with today’s desire to scandalize even if it is by using lies and slander, the joke of the illustrious Cela sounds like something angelic.
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