OK, so let’s talk about alternative
facts. But we’re not going to start with Kellyanne Conway, or Stephen Bannon,
or even Donald Trump.
We’re going to start with Pokémon.
It was a July afternoon, and I was
walking past the water tower in Cape May, NJ. Behind me, I heard cars honking, as
a young man nearly caused an accident while driving carelessly through an
intersection with a cell phone in his hand. This driver, you see, was playing Pokémon
Go. You might remember this game taking the nation captive for a week or two in
early summer last year. The Cape May water tower had a Pokémon there, so this
driver had decided not to worry about the real traffic, but to focus instead on
the cartoon character dancing around on his smartphone. He pulled his car over,
put it in park, and captured his tiny monster.
They called this enormously
successful game an example of “augmented reality.” It’s a kind of technology
that mixes the real world with digital technology, and we haven’t seen the last
of it. In the case of Pokémon, it involved following a real navigational map on
your phone in search of cartoon creatures who only surfaced on the phone when
you were near certain spots.
America seemed to love the idea of
blending truth and fiction back in July. Of course, they could put the phone
down whenever they wanted and get back to real life. The same applies to so
many of the Instagram and Snapchat photos we send and receive each day. They
are often another form of altered reality, with staged photos that reveal us in
ways that may not be genuine or tell the full story. But, again, we can dip in
and out of our friends’ lives or Kylie Jenner’s world whenever we want. It’s
not forced upon us.
So that brings us to February 2017.
America has branched out from its social media-fueled, Pokémon-popping, fantasy
football-playing alternative reality and voted a president into office who is a
“reality” TV star, meaning he spent years hosting a show that featured staged
competitions. We have voted in a man who has mastered a form of social media
that engages in alternative dialogues that don’t involve real conversations,
and that often end with the words “So sad!” Many people keep saying they’re
shocked that he is now president, but you could argue that we chose this path a
long time ago, the moment we stopped looking at one another and started living in
part through our phones and tablets.
Now this president holds us captive,
breaking news every hour so that we can’t stop checking those phones again,
this time in order to keep up with the alternative reality that is his
presidency. We keep reading stories and watching videos about him – some of us
pleased, some disgusted. But either way, we’re living in a Truman Show world in which we are the puppets, while Christof
looks down upon us and smiles.
During these past two weeks, some of
us may have come to the realization that neither Siri nor Alexa nor any emoji
we can find will get us out of this world. And Barack Obama is no longer here
to take care of business while we OD on Candy Crush. It’s up to us now. Alternative
realities and alternative facts are everywhere we look. If we wanted that
world, then we’ve got it. But if we are appalled and angered and demand better,
we’ve got to do more than bash Donald Trump. We’ve got to start with a long,
hard look in the mirror.
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