The Internet that cried ‘Lemmy’

So it turned out to be true after all. Lemmy Kilmister, the quasi-legendary frontman of Motorhead, has shuffled off his mortal coil… and the Great Gig In the Sky has just got that much louder as a consequence.

It was an unhappy end to a year that had already claimed BB King, Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots vocalist), country legend Willie Nelson and Angus Young (guitarist of AC/DC). But if it’s any consolation, at least it means the music awaiting us all in the afterlife should be a sight better than the music we leave behind…

So on that note: farewell and muchos gracias, Lemmy. Your handlebar moustache will not have been in vain…

But hang on a sec, I hear you all say. What’s this about Angus Young having passed away in 2015? Surely I wasn’t taken in by that blatantly unconvincing internet hoax a few months ago… the one that claimed he allegedly asphyxiated himself on stage, when his tie got caught up in his guitar strap halfway through the solo on ‘Highway to Hell’…? 

And as for Willie Nelson: rumours of his demise turned out to be equally exaggerated. Did I fall for that one, too?

Erm… well… yes, actually. Hook, line and sinker, both times. In fact, so moved was I by the report of Angus Young’s tragic accidental self-strangulation, that I even posted a tribute on Facebook: a Youtube clip of ‘Ride On’ (featuring another dearly departed rock legend, Bonn Scott… really dead, this time). 

And looking back on it… why shouldn’t I have believed it, anyway? Since when is the premature death of a rock star considered too implausible to be true? OK, perhaps the cause of death was a little far-fetched. One drug cocktail too many – as was sadly the case with Scott Weiland – would have been more realistic. 

But rock stars aren’t exactly immortal, you know. Even those who, like Willie Nelson (and Paul McCartney, whose death has been reported since 1969) live and rock on to venerable old ages… they too will eventually perish sooner or later. 

Strangely, however, some people out there prefer ‘sooner’ to ‘later’. Let’s face it: the worldwide web has been awash with false rumours of celebrity deaths ever since its inception a couple of decades ago. Along with images of cats, it seems to be the whole point in even having this thing called ‘The Internet’ to begin with. 

In 2015 alone, it ‘killed’ Will Smith, Bruce Willis, Miley Cyrus, Cher and Justin Beiber. Last year, it was Joe Pesci, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eddie Murphy and Bob Dylan. Meanwhile, Jackie Chan has reportedly ‘died’ around 200 times since his first obituary appeared in 2002. Same cause each time, too. An accident during a stunt.

Needless to say, I believed every single one of those reports. Except the one about Lemmy, of course… the only one that turned out to be true.

All of which raises a small question. Why the flaming Lamborghini would anyone go through the trouble of fabricating an entirely concocted news report, and then disseminate it as widely as possible through the worldwide web? What the heck do they even get out of it?

I imagine part of the answer will have something to do with generating ‘hits’, which in turn can be somehow monetised through some nebulous scheme comprehensible only to the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world. But that’s only part of the answer. The rest will concern a uniquely human trait, whereby some people get some kind of kick out of deception for its own sake. 

And what is the Internet, anyway, if not a public access database of all human traits, foibles and quirks… to a large degree unregulated and unaccountable to anyone? If it is a human characteristic to lie though one’s teeth… shouldn’t this also be reflected, along with all other characteristics, in what is ultimately the definitive world repository of all human detritus, great and small?

In any case: the upshot is that, for whatever reason, a very large percentage of everything you read online will invariably be a bunch of total bollocks. Not just the false rumours of celebrity suicides and overdoses… much of the regular news will be total hogwash, too.

A recent example which caught my attention involved a story originating in North Korea: a conveniently distant and totalitarian State, in which little can be reliably confirmed or verified. According to this report (later debunked by Snopes), Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un had his own uncle – a former government advisor – executed for high treason. The uncle in question was allegedly stripped naked and thrown into a pit to be torn apart by a pack of dogs.

All untrue, naturally. It transpired that the original source was an anti-government website hosted outside North Korea, which had a glaring motive for spreading fibs about the Dear Leader. And it doesn’t help that the official denial came from the government of North Korea: whose State-owned media houses cannot be trusted either.

Put the two instances of online dishonesty together, and a disconcerting reality swims into view. North Korea is perhaps an extreme example of absolute State media control. But it’s only an example. The former Soviet Union would have worked just as well; its defunct State newspaper ‘Pravda’ (The Truth’) is to this day cited as a typical example of doctored propaganda in any tin-pot dictatorship. 

The simple reality is that, in all cases where there is a perceived State monopoly on ‘truth’, it is quite frankly impossible to believe official information. And you don’t need to go all the way to North Korea. Whether we live in totalitarian dictatorships or liberal Western democracies, what passes for the ‘news’ invariably has to be taken with a pinch of salt. The greater the political interference, the more generous the pinch. Nothing you didn’t already know.

Now, swing the pendulum all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum. What happens in a scenario where there is absolutely no form of censorship whatsoever, and no restrictions of any kind on what information gets publicly disseminated? Why, we get bombarded from every angle by around a million hoaxes a day, of course…ranging from the utterly banal to the hugely consequential… until a point is reached where you simply can’t take anything at all at face value, ever again. 

Either way – extreme censorship, or extreme liberty – the outcome is the same. ‘The truth’ becomes an unnecessary commodity, to be supplanted by whatever bullshit would generate more hits, or serve whatever other inscrutable purpose it was invented to achieve. In a sense, it’s a bit like the old fable about the boy who cried wolf. Only in this scenario, it is an entire global network of information – the ‘worldwide web’, no less – that constantly does all the crying. 

Against this backdrop, facts become increasingly hard to determine. And that – ideally – is where the so-called mainstream media should come in. 

Once again, Lemmy’s demise makes a useful blueprint. As long as the early reports came from sources such as ‘Newsthump’ and ‘the Daily Beast’, his death could safely be dismissed as a hoax. When it was picked up by the BBC and all major online newspapers, it could safely – but even then, not with 100% certainty – be verified as fact.

As with the boy who cried wolf, there is a moral to this cautionary tale. At the simplest level, it would be “check your sources before hitting the ‘share’ button on that dodgy link”. On a broader level, however, it is also a gentle reminder that spreading information carries with it certain responsibilities. In a world dominated by colossal falsehood, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. (I think that’s actually a quote by someone… I read it on the Internet).  

To put it another way: how does one navigate through this electronic ocean of deceit, if not by placing trust in the mainstream media for confirmation of ‘news’? And how can one actually trust the mainstream media, when we all know there are so many vested interests at stake? 

Well, judging only by Malta’s equivalents of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ sources… you can’t. 

I’ll limit myself to just one recent example. Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog recently carried an entry – which was plastered all over the Maltese social media – claiming that a certain lawyer was in receipt of a consultancy package worth 170 euros an hour. The lawyer just happened to be the (Labour) mayor of Msida, Alex Sciberras… who vehemently denied the allegation, demanded an apology and eventually sued the blogger for libel.

The blogpost itself was removed… and to date that is the only reliable indicator that there must be some truth to Sciberras’s protestations of innocence. 

I won’t waste time questioning why the unproven claim was even made in the first place. Let’s be realistic here: this is not exactly the first time a complete fabrication has appeared on that blog. What interests me about this example is that it illustrates how deeply the culture of online deceit has taken root. It is a culture whereby ‘facts’ are not even considered important any more… still less ‘sacred’… so just about any old fabrication can be thrown out there, on the basis that some of the mud might stick.

And granted, Daphne’s blog is not exactly ‘mainstream’… though it is occasionally cited as such by the Opposition in parliament. The problem is that the rest of the media landscape is not so very different either.

The political media are the most blatant examples, though I won’t deny that private media houses, including this one, may be guilty of the same charge. But the extent to which facts are routinely distorted on such ‘mainstream’ channels is little short of astonishing.

Each day we experience an utterly surreal Jekyll-and-Hide transformation, whereby the mood and atmosphere of the entire country automatically changes from ‘sunny and bright’ to ‘dark and dismal’… just by switching from One Tv to NET on your remote control.

It would almost be comical, if the effect wasn’t so disturbing. We are genuinely expected to simultaneously believe two utterly incompatible impressions of the reality that surrounds us… by two parties that have every interest in distorting that reality beyond recognition. I mean, how gullible do they even think we are?

Well, that is precisely the problem. I, for one, am gullible enough to believe a patently false report about a rock guitarist’s death. Others will no doubt be gullible enough to believe any equally fanciful concoction, especially if it somehow fits in with their own worldview. Inevitably, the cycle will be perpetuated.

So allow me to end my last column for 2015 with the traditional prediction for the coming year. I see a year of bullshit ahead, folks. It’s going to be 365 days of total and utter hogwash, thrown at us all from every conceivable angle, from every conceivable source, all the bloody time.

And of course, I wish all my readers the utmost joy and happiness for every second it lasts…