Hyperreality & Bigotry

The first time that I can remember running across the word 'bigot' I was in my early teens. I cannot remember the definition exactly, but it was something along the lines of the very most common one:

a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own

WordNet via Wordnik 

Bigot has become one of the most common words used these days, and rarely does it actually refer to someone who is prejudiced (holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions - American Heritage) or one who is intolerant (Unwilling to tolerate differences in opinions, practices, or beliefs, especially religious beliefs - American Heritage), but it is almost always the opening salvo in a discussion toward somebody who holds socially conservative views.

If we are unfortunate to be discussing something in real life, these words are uttered even before the argument is presented.

My absolute favorite aspect of all of this is what I call the argumentum ad bigotum. in which the person will say even though you may not be racist/sexist/homophobe for thinking this because you have nuanced beliefs, the majority of people who DO think this way ARE bigots, as if this sheds any light on the situation instead of further muddying the waters.

We all know that the true test of your honesty and commitment to a position is if it will work n reverse... If I were to tell a "Democratic Socialist" that, while their positions and arguments may be valid, the majority of people who have them are simply the terminally lazy and jealous types who only think & vote that way because of their vices. Why, if I made such an argument, I might even be called a... BIGOT.

Yet it is possible for somebody to unironically insist that holding onto certain beliefs means that you (or at least everybody else besides you who is in your camp) is prejudiced and intolerant. The hypocrisy of such a position is often lost on people: they throw the blanket accusation of bigotry on entire groups of people because of their memories of select people and, what is more interesting to me, the false memories and narratives given to them by TV.

Jean Baudrillard referred to this concept as hyperreality. 

In our culture, Baudrillard argues that we take ‘maps’ of reality television and film as more real than our actual lives. These simulacra or hyperreal copies precede our lives, such that our television friends may seem more ‘alive’ to us than the real person playing that character. He also began studying how media affected our perception of reality and the world. Here he found that in a post-modern media-laden society we encounter “the death of the real”, where one lives in a hyperreal realm by connecting more and more deeply with things like television sitcoms, music videos, virtual reality games or Disneyland, things that have come to simulate reality. He argues that in a post-modern culture dominated by TV, films, the Internet and media all that exists are simulations of reality, which aren’t any more or less ‘real’ than the reality they simulate.

Enter Hyperreality

Jean Baudrillard, creator of the concept of hyperreality

People's new concept of right and wrong are very much formed by the messages that they interface with on television, and I believe it is as this point that they use the tidbits they come across in their daily lives to bolster the ideas that they have received from TV. We cannot blame anyone for this -- it is something that we all do. We all suffer from a sort of confirmation bias, but now the bias is working in a funny way: instead of actively criticizing what we see on TV or the Internet, we are more likely to accept the truth we get from the TV & Internet (which very much constitutes hyperreality in the way that I wish to talk about it) and we actually begin to reject reality.

Reality plays second fiddle to the digital world. This is not so much because we have actually prioritized the digital above real interactions, but it is because we spend so much time with the digital, and the time that we spend with flesh & blood reality is far more clearly interlaced with digital culture than it is with the unfiltered and naked realities that we share with other humans.

I think it may even be true for many people here that the cumulative amount of words that they communicate to people via text on digital screens or across other digital mediums over a week is actually greater than the amount of communications that they have in reality.

TV & Infotainment, the Directors of Hyperreality

TV (and this can refer to Netflix) and film have taught us that Southerners are racists, alpha male types are sexists, Christians are bigots and narrow-minded, and that those who have faced prejudice toward their sexual inclination are all angels on the receiving end of the late 20th century's greatest injustices. Of course, TV et al allows these tropes to be broken: if the Southerner is, in fact, allied against all of the paper tiger racists that the TV show has created, and if it is the one Christian in the episode who has a modicum of nuance or, far more likely, is presented as somebody with a mega-meta analysis in which Christian concepts of morality are actually thrown out the window.

The news & infotainment industries also back this up in their own quaint way by focusing on the very same issues that are usually important to TV-world. They are eager to report on any kind of incident of racism, sexism, or homophobia because it feeds directly into the themes that they want to use to mold the opinions of the country, but will ignore far more impactful news that actually deals with death, huge sums of money, or emerging legal precedents. To be entirely fair, this is not something that the media is doing solely to practice narrative crafting: they also do it because it is these types of silly stories that involve race, gender, or sexuality that end up being the focal points of far greater ideological discussions. But let us remember: the stories that are picked are carefully curated, and they are meant to serve the point.

There is a reason why Michael Brown was a lot bigger story than Micah Xavier Jones.

Of course, as stated above, hyperreality does include exceptions. The media is not entirely "black & white," but let us not pretend that the existence of some amount of gray area actually means that the industry, as a whole, is telling an unbiased and respectable story. For it is the exceptions that are always used not to break the rule and render it irrelevant, but to prove the rule. Nearly all men are born with two functioning eyes. The men who are born without two functioning eyes are anomalous, and they are viewed as having some sort of extenuating circumstance. Thus the alpha-male who is not a sexist on TV is an exception that validates the trope: he would not be a friendly character with a name and a role to play if he was like the others.

The only time that people use the exception to break a rule is when they are trying to argue against you. In reality, we all understand this concept: we simply choose to ignore it when it suits us. 

It is because of this that we can say that everything is actually set up in a way to promote a unified truth of everything. There is the Light and the Dark, and the Gray are the ones that exist as plot tools to either write a story of them coming to the light or going to the dark. 

Hyperreality & NPCs

Hyperreality ultimately fuels bigotry by creating narratives consumed by the masses, and the masses then go into the world and act upon these realities. The broadcasters, more than anyone else, shape hyperreality, and so it is the media and infotainment industry as a whole which feed the people their world view.

This is why the NPC meme hit home so well: it implied that there are loads of people that do not think for themselves but actually function as Non-Player Characters. One could state, simply, that an NPC is programmed -- they are somebody who functions only in terms of the hyperreality that is dictated to them, and they come off as impervious to change, unreachable, robotic.

There is also something pathetic about the way that they will even bring out the tropes from their TV shows when discussing things. They are Dumbledore's Army; they are Jedi Knights; we are followers of Sauron  and if you don't know it, my sweet summer child, you are in for a rude awakening.

The world is now understood in a way that has been programmed. The mind is full of fake characters and fake memories that create tropes and themes which people believe play out constantly in the real world. People no longer deal with one another as people, but deal with them as if they are characters from a TV show who are symbols and stand-ins for some kind of ultimate reality being fed to them by media.

Hyperreality itself creates a system of bigotry: everybody becomes biased, prejudiced, indoctrinated, and unwilling to change. They also become unreachable.

Can the word "bigotry" have meaning when it comes from people who are slavishly devoted to a media-driven narrative of the world?

Can the word "bigotry" ever have any meaning when it is said without thought for whether or not the person is actually displaying an actual ignorance of the topic and a manifested intolerance for the object of criticism?

In hyperreality, these things do not need to be thought about anymore. People believe that they saw it all on a TV show or in a movie; they read the article about the man who called the police on a black man for wanting to use a Starbucks bathroom. They watched the movie about Matthew Shepherd.

It'll never actually matter to them what you think. The important truths have already been decided on the screens that they look at. Even if you aren't a bigot, the characters like you on TV are bigots, and that is enough of an argument against you to dismiss anything you could say.

Maybe you're not a bigot -- but if you were on TV, you would be. Case closed.