Truth suffers from two major downsides:
- It is often complex and requires efforts to comprehend, yet few have the intellectual readiness to take an interest in it,
- In the end, truth is seldom impressive, and there is little satisfaction to get.
Attention is more easily captured by sensational news that don’t need to be important, not even to be true. In fact, in an audience-based ecosystem, everything tends to become entertainment, scenery, story telling. The average user becomes a lazy audience waiting to be entertained, and increasingly less a citizen who demands information.
Studies show that fake news attract more attention than real news. We are in the age of “post-truth”. This is not far from the idea of “propaganda”, but the context is significantly different. The perceived helplessness “we can’t do anything about it” could explain the lack of interest in truth, and the disengagement of voters.
Getting the attention of a largely disengaged audience on important topics requires all the more talent.