Artigos

Conteúdo (article):

Câmaras que ecoam ódio, bolhas que destilam medo:
constituição do eu e intolerância como raízes da desinformação.
Chambers that echo hate, bubbles that distill fear:
the constitution of self and intolerance as roots of disinformation
Ensaio
Paulo Roberto Vasconcellos-Silva
Luis David Castiel

Abstract
Illusion and truth acquire indistinct faces in the virtual environment: xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia – among other systematic failures of discernment due to anger – are recurring vices in the colossal traffic of social networks. We witness physical and virtual “vigilante justice” executed by groups that appear and disappear according to intense and fleeting hatred. This review-essay articulates theories in three segments: (1) Genealogies in the psychic framework; idea of threat to the “natural order”; uncertainties and misinformation generating meanings; and the exploitation of resentments to alleviate impotence. (2) Mediations: “echo chambers”, “filter bubbles”, and adherence algorithms, for the agglutination of the resentful and disoriented. (3) Political and health developments: ethics indifferent to deception; incitement of intolerance for profits; disclosure of affronts, controversies, and repudiation for engagement; niches of political power; and consequences for democracies and global health security. The conclusions highlight new and monumental challenges in an increasingly hostile and incomprehensible mediasphere, as well as the urgent need for environments permeated by full communication.

Keywords: health communication, media and health, misinformation, Social Media, hate.

Introduction
In 2018, an incendiary WhatsApp message spread in Acatlán, Mexico (1): “... beware of a plague of child kidnappers entering the country (...) involved in organ trafficking (...) children aged 4, 8, and 14 have disappeared, and some have been found dead with their organs removed. Their abdomens had been cut open and were empty.”
Ricardo Flores (21 years old) and his uncle Alberto Flores (43 years old) were detained by the authorities. There were no formal complaints against them and no records of children being kidnapped in the city. As a tragic consequence, within a few hours they were beaten and burned alive outside the police station after being accused, with no basis in truth, of stealing children’s organs. They were executed by an angry mob driven by “fake news” that, for some reason, had become popular at the time. Illusion and truth can very easily and quickly acquire indistinct faces in the virtual environment. The digital universe is home to “digital personas”, as online representations of oneself without ties to reality that can take on a hostile or eroticized public appearance, in line with perceptions distorted towards expectations. Anonymity and distance can lead some individuals to adopt personas, just as passions become more ardent and dangers seem much more horrific due to internally exaggerated loves or terrors.
At the national level, in 2014, “Guarujá Alerta” (Facebook) released information about an alleged “woman who is kidnapping children to perform black magic”, emphasizing that “whether it is a rumor or not, we must beware”. Images of a fake sketch and a photo of a woman with no connection to the case were posted. Neither of these faces resembled that of Fabiane Maria de Jesus, who was brutally murdered after being mistaken for the alleged kidnapper. The public perception of a vile witch triggered herd behavior in a lynch mob (there were rumors of hundreds, perhaps thousands) – men, women, and even children were involved in the episode (2). Participants stated that “people said it was the woman from the internet, who was from the Guarujá Alerta page”. We are in the third decade of the 21st century, witnessing regressions to a “Media Age” of physical “vigilante justice” against witches and a return to flat-earthers. As in the day of the Holy Inquisition, one person commented, “they said the woman was the one who had come out on Facebook, who practiced black magic”.
In 2018, an incendiary WhatsApp message spread in Acatlán, Mexico (1): “... beware of a plague of child kidnappers entering the country (...) involved in organ trafficking (...) children aged 4, 8, and 14 have disappeared, and some have been found dead with their organs removed. Their abdomens had been cut open and were empty.”
Ricardo Flores (21 years old) and his uncle Alberto Flores (43 years old) were detained by the authorities. There were no formal complaints against them and no records of children being kidnapped in the city. As a tragic consequence, within a few hours they were beaten and burned alive outside the police station after being accused, with no basis in truth, of stealing children’s organs. They were executed by an angry mob driven by “fake news” that, for some reason, had become popular at the time. Illusion and truth can very easily and quickly acquire indistinct faces in the virtual environment. The digital universe is home to “digital personas”, as online representations of oneself without ties to reality that can take on a hostile or eroticized public appearance, in line with perceptions distorted towards expectations. Anonymity and distance can lead some individuals to adopt personas, just as passions become more ardent and dangers seem much more horrific due to internally exaggerated loves or terrors.
At the national level, in 2014, “Guarujá Alerta” (Facebook) released information about an alleged “woman who is kidnapping children to perform black magic”, emphasizing that “whether it is a rumor or not, we must beware”. Images of a fake sketch and a photo of a woman with no connection to the case were posted. Neither of these faces resembled that of Fabiane Maria de Jesus, who was brutally murdered after being mistaken for the alleged kidnapper. The public perception of a vile witch triggered herd behavior in a lynch mob (there were rumors of hundreds, perhaps thousands) – men, women, and even children were involved in the episode (2). Participants stated that “people said it was the woman from the internet, who was from the Guarujá Alerta page”. We are in the third decade of the 21st century, witnessing regressions to a “Media Age” of physical “vigilante justice” against witches and a return to flat-earthers. As in the day of the Holy Inquisition, one person commented, “they said the woman was the one who had come out on Facebook, who practiced black magic”.
The microdynamics of the slanderous repercussion processes in Acatlán and Guarujá offer us an uncomfortable feeling of familiarity and proximity. There are thousands of facts and hoaxes focused on the vulnerability of children, violence in urban areas, and potential threats posed by strangers. New moral panics caused by intangible vectors on a planetary scale have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. New situations cause excessive errors in critical judgments, compromised by atavistic aversions. The ethics of provocation and insult encourage xenophobia, misogyny, racism, homophobia, among many other systematic deformations of action caused by anger. Conspiracy theories, hate speech, and denialist perspectives, fueled by vile political and economic interests, scramble data and information, producing more shadows than light. Unfortunately, with the development of communication technologies, they have become recurring vices in the colossal traffic of digital networks.

1. Genealogy of “alternative truths”
Although born from extreme feelings of aversion and later elaborated by the peace of humanist thought, the idea that implies compromise with what is external to “us” would not in itself be a psychoanalytical concept. Freud, in his day, witnessed the instrumentalization of hatred and the incitement to violence against differences in Germany in the 1930s. Several of Freud’s texts reaffirm his objection to the instrumentalization of intolerance towards others, such as in “Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” (1921) (3); “Cultural Discontents” (1930) (4). and “Moses and Monotheism” (1939) (5). The outbreak of the horrors perpetrated by National Socialism was centered on intolerance towards others, supported by the ideology of racial supremacy. Based on this scenario, Freud analyzed the emerging malaise in Europe in those decades, considering the marriage between violence and individualism, which is so peculiarly similar to the 20th century. In 1930, he stated that “civilization is a problem and makes us unhappy” (4), believing that human beings are inherently aggressive creatures who enjoy exercising violence and hurting each other. From this perspective, he called the phenomenon of persistent belligerence between neighboring communities, under the premise of identity affirmation for social connection, the “narcissism of small differences.” Spaniards against Portuguese, English against Scots, and northern Germans against southern Germans exercise a “comfortable and relatively harmless satisfaction of aggressiveness” to strengthen cohesion among community members. (4) (p. 81). In this sense, in “narcissism of small differences,” he develops the idea that the narcissistic image serves as a “precursor of the image of oneself,” placing itself there primarily as a mechanism through which to constitute the “I” and the “we.” This composition has, as its elementary psychic function, the need to preserve the narcissism of unity which, taken to extremes, degenerates into extreme brutality directed towards others in the form of racism and xenophobia, among other paroxysmal expressions of intolerance.
From such perspectives, anger is divisive in our psychic framework, long before it is destructive. Repulsion helps to separate what is inside (pleasurable) from what is outside (harmful, unpleasant), which is expelled and experienced as external. In Freud (6), love and hate are qualitatively distinct forces, although the latter, like aversion, is prior. What is pleasurable to the primordial pleasure-ego is incorporated and no longer perceived as external to the same extent that the external, the displeasure, is bad. From the perspective of narcissistic aversion, the prohibition of the rejected object operates as an energy of preservation of the same (the ego that closes itself off) and repulsion of otherness. The Freudian interpretation of “narcissism” in this dimension highlights the clash of the narcissistic ego with the “other”. This will be the eternal object of hostility and constant unconfessed resentment merely for being another, who threatens unity, no matter how similar this other may be to the Self. When instrumentalized by culture, this anger is driven to paroxysm, leading to segregation and racism, maximum expressions of intolerance towards the other for the sake of cohesion.
Regarding lies in the service of hatred, in the subconscious dimension, there is no distinction between truth and lies – there is no “sign of reality” (7). In other words, fake news, at the level of subjectivity, would not be lies that hide truths, but lies that are true. For the subconscious there would be no false construction, only the truthfulness about the subject\'s position in the face of the Other\'s desire. The logic of the subconscious does not deal with the factual versus the unreal, but only with constructions necessary for the demands of meaning in the structuring of desires.
Lacan observes that men, as “fragile beings” in an increasingly complex daily existence, live under the scarcity of meanings in the structural helplessness caused by the emergence of the real (8) (p. 14). According to this understanding, Fake News would be devices that generate meaning in the face of the difficult clash with the real. Fragile beings need narratives that confer meaning more than the concreteness of truth (8). False stories would have the essential function of engendering a precarious balance between feelings of helplessness (made explicit in the discourse “one cannot believe in anything”) and the need for security through the reestablishment of a “traditional order” of yesteryear. Lies can also be at the service of narcissism, at the basis of the constitution of the “I/we” and the other, proliferating in these endless clashes in an attempt to preserve the uniqueness of the self. Each detail of the other described in a defamatory manner moves more energy towards the veto of otherness. This understanding links the emotions that hold an organization together to admit that, in moments of risk, internal love is not enough; the presence of hatred, a component of the death drive and destruction directed at those who are foreign to us, is necessary. Linking anger solely to destruction diminishes its amplitude and its phenomenal and conceptual complexity.
Hatred can be an extremely profitable commodity, but it is also a paradoxical feeling in meaning, although coherent with the constitution and affirmation of the Self. Although it presents itself in its negative eversion dimension, it also exerts an affirmative psychic function, of narcissistic preservation that enables the differentiation between the Self and the object of rejection. In other words, the concept of hating one’s Self asserts itself and defines itself in its differentiation from the hated object. From such perspectives, adolescent anger would arise from anxiety, loneliness, a feeling of impotence, and a lack of control, as a “narcissistic affect” that makes one dependent on the approval of one’s peers. Until the affirmation of one’s Self, the adolescent will oscillate within apparent arrogance, which disguises the terror of appearing inadequate. When faced with the spectacle of the screen, it is possible to often feel as if you were returning to your puberty years. Exposure to perfect bodies and consumer objects causes an impact of frustration when compared to the mediocrity perceived in ordinary life. Perhaps not coincidentally, certain content avidly consumed by many teenagers fascinates them by alleviating frustrations through hatred.

Perception of irrelevance – security in the natural order of things
Today, there seems to be a growing number of ordinary people who, increasingly perceiving themselves as outdated, irrelevant, or obsolete individuals, seek to regain power through identification and political articulation with peers. This ends up pressuring the individual towards demands for monolithic, simplified, categorical, and natural epistemic systems, such as patriotic values, the traditional family, gender normativity, and the great truth revealed by God. Traditional religious systems have resigned themselves to their irrelevance in solving technical problems, despite their centrality to identity needs built on the basis of moral tradition. Fake News also offers the illusion of a natural order that needs to be reestablished towards the Guidelines of Family, Country, and God. In this journey, hate offers itself as a powerful propellant.
Disinformation on networks serves to generate meaning and reaffirm values in the face of the complexities and uncertainties of reality. The return to traditional values reassures us with a sense of universal, stable, and unequivocal order. Misleading posts on social media exploit resentments and insecurities, offering themselves as palliatives to the feeling of impotence and lack of faith in the legitimizing bodies of the current world. Thus, simplistic epistemic systems surrounding “patriotic values,” “traditional family”, and “God’s truths” serve to rescue a sense of purpose and direction. These commonly involve reshaping hatred against threats to heteronormativity, moral order, and community. Anger is used as a powerful force to mobilize and drive individuals toward this distorted notion of restored order. In short, fake news works in favor of the longing for meaning and security, offering simplistic solutions by appealing to the return to traditional values. It exploits vulnerabilities, fuels hatred, and leads to a distorted vision of a natural order (under threat) that must be defended and restored.

2. Catalysts and mediations
Chambers that echo hate, bubbles that distill fear.
Skopje, Macedonia, has become a prominent political city on the contemporary political map as the headquarters of the Fake News industry (9). During the 2016 elections and after Trump\'s inauguration, more than a thousand fake news websites operated in the city, leading unemployed young Macedonians to amass fortunes by constructing misleading narratives. Pages reporting American politics (mostly plagiarized from American far-right blogs) and controversial articles have made young people millionaires. To understand the exponential scale observed in the replication of these articles, it is worth highlighting the role of the mechanisms that drive collective beliefs generated by the need to affirm a group identity.
A phenomenon implicated in the genealogy and repercussion of fake news refers to “echo chambers” (10) amplified by “filter bubbles” (11 - 12) and generated by confirmation biases (11). The concept of “echo chambers” originated with the emergence of social networks shortly after the advent of broadband. The need for groups to share experiences, opinions, and persecutory theories has increasingly opened the door to the dissemination of surreptitious false alarms, as in the tragedies of Acatlán and Guarujá. Ideological chambers are metaphorical figures associated (10) with individuals grouped by similar positions who isolate themselves from society, accumulating resentful versions of events that reinforce a group position. Those who live inside these chambers are prone to accepting and sharing news that aligns with their beliefs, discarding or ignoring contrary evidence. Individuals with similar ideas surround themselves with opinions that align with their worldviews. The advent of broadband has provided broader avenues for the hyper-dimensioning of these atmospheres of hate.
To fully understand this mechanism, it is important to mention the work of Tversky and Kahneman (13) on the influence of heuristic elements and principles in creating shortcuts for judgments that, in turn, guide human behavior. In everyday life, interpretations and decisions are based on beliefs built on factual data that are not fully known or considered. Thus, to reduce the complexity of decisions, individuals subject their experiences to the sieve of elementary rules (validated by their group), opening space for systematic errors in judgment – also known as prejudice. Confirmation biases are thus defined as tendencies to search for, interpret, and memorize data that confirm beliefs (13). In the context of echo chambers, confirmations play a crucial role in perpetuating cycles of false information. As catalysts, they contribute to the construction of meaning and the stabilization of restrictive epistemic environments, where individuals with similar positions isolate themselves and reinforce reciprocal beliefs.
To enhance these devices, there are filter bubbles – search algorithms that are busy supplying profiles with information, videos, and news that aim to highlight and reaffirm certainties. Content that is shaped by users\' beliefs is highlighted and replicated, deepening the segregation of perspectives and extreme group polarization (12). Although developed to offer content relevant to users\' consumption habits, filter bubbles are placed on the terrain of cognitive capitalism as a propellant or "barrier against communicative action". Therefore, as already described, a self-sufficient form of epistemic exile is created, provided by the action of algorithms that assume the heteronomy of the selection of information accepted as "personalized". "Filter bubbles" are constituted by the power of search algorithms, fed by machine learning mechanisms that seek preferences based on data provided by the user and their "click behavior". They usually lead to states of epistemic isolation as a product of flowcharts that act by providing information aligned with beliefs and interests to corroborate and strengthen echo chambers. In this way, they contribute to the segregation of insular perspectives and the deepening of extreme group polarization. As described, they constitute a self-sufficient form of cognitive-social renunciation, through which individuals exclude themselves within communicative bubbles, erected by a narrow range of points of view. The inhabitants of these chambers thus find themselves without openness to “yes” or “no” in the speech acts of interlocutors, which makes “illocutionary successes” unfeasible, when, on a plane of interpersonal relations, the participants in communication understand each other about something in the world (12). The gluttony for confirmatory novelty (and obsession with the vanity of their irreducible beliefs) gathers strength to isolate the inhabitants of echo chambers from any type of contradictory point of view by curating “adherence optimization algorithms” to hateful content. Listening to and understanding the other is a dialectical process of understanding that seeks an agreement that satisfies the conditions of a rationally motivated assent to the content of emission. In short, as Ricoeur illustrates, “communicative competence encompasses the art of understanding non-understanding and the explanatory science of distortions” (14).
The goal of a virtual networking platform goes beyond the dissemination of content, which is as formidable as it is irrelevant and forgettable. It also includes instilling resentment and cultivating resentment among users by “doing things in a way that makes them feel angry, in danger, or afraid. The most effective situation is one in which users enter into strange spirals of a very powerful consensus or, on the contrary, of serious conflict with other users” (15). At this point, relevant similarities can be seen between the “old” media and the new technologies based on algorithmic curation. Catastrophes are morbidly valuable material for all media, especially if they result from the vile actions of men (16). Visually tragic spectacles are especially valued by television cameras in conjunction with their original and necessary counterpoint, the voyeurism of audiences (17). Similarly, tragedies that give meaning to discourses of intolerance are rhetorically powerful in driving echo chambers and their “consensus spirals.”

2. Political and health consequences
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, vaccines were already available and fake news was flooding social media. Misinformation added many deaths that could have been avoided. The daily death toll reached hundreds and there were people who refused to wear masks (such as the president of the Republic at the time). The National Immunization Program (Programa Nacional de Imunizações – PNI) encountered strong resistance in convincing many Brazilians to get vaccinated, likely influenced by fake news on social media. In this context, epidemiologist Roberto Medronho used an interesting metaphor about the negative impact of lies and their number of victims in Brazil: “it´s the equivalent to 4 or 5 planes crashing every day” – even with the daily publication of these macabre numbers, millions of individuals continued to fall into the trap of anti-vaccination (18). Perhaps this analogy portrays well the power and harmful reach of misinformation, which exposed thousands of people to disease and death. In parallel with official media outlets, social media is also spreading a large volume of misleading health information (19 - 20). In 2022, one in five Fake News stories circulating in Brazil referred to COVID-19 vaccines (21). According to Galhardi, misinformation about vaccines used “distorted statistics about the COVID-19 infection, deaths, cures, and homemade methods for preventing and curing COVID” (21). In countries with lower vaccine hesitancy, there is a strong correlation between agreement with aspects related to the safety and efficacy of vaccines and higher rates of people who report having vaccinated their children (22).
Hate speech can foster vaccine hesitancy through conspiracy theories, often lacking any theoretical basis. Such narratives often portray vaccines as pieces of a malicious and manipulative intent, exploiting fear and distrust to attract followers. By reinforcing negative beliefs for the purpose of polarization, they establish the rationality of antagonism and division. The exploitation of emotions is a frequent tactic of emotional manipulation in hate speech to captivate followers and extract engagement. Tensions regarding vaccine safety are exploited through dramatic and alarming narratives about cases and facts, as well as the communicative effects of persecutory metaphors (23). In the field of competition for public attention, adherence to theories and the formation of online communities, tragic stories largely win over bio-techno-scientific versions. In anti-vax communities, mutual support and reinforcement of beliefs are found in the creation of atmospheres of validation and resistance to any information that contradicts them (24). In these bubbles, the most dramatic confessional accounts, full of narratives of suffering, operate as generators of meaning and insecurity in contrast with the complexities and uncertainties of immunobiological theories. Finally, the sum of so much “anti-evidence” produces (by equivalence and need to locate those responsible) the effect of aversion, intolerance, and stigmatization of vaccine advocates.
Some authors linearly link the uncontrollable dissemination of Fake News to insufficient education and information literacy or to the “competence involved in the process of searching for and using data efficiently, safely and productively, identifying its relevance in a given context” (25). Perhaps the absence or momentary weakening of this type of competence serves as a modulator of “acute aversions” of angry herds under circumstances of multiple shortages, as in Acatlán and Guarujá. On the other hand, such theories do not make sense of the worrying escalation of “organized anger” in political groups that advocate the extermination of minorities in several European countries. Xenophobic demonstrations have become increasingly frequent and violent in the Old World and seem irrepressible by legal systems. In the 21st century, anger is expressed in an explosive and increasingly armed manner. The forces of anger have reorganized themselves through the “digital squadron” of virtual networks and are expressed at the epicenter of new European, Latin American, and American populisms. A new and peculiar form of “information literacy of hate”, developed within echo chambers and bubbles of intolerance, is gradually dominating the political scene of countries that have become exemplary due to their distinguished educational systems. These have enabled notable material development, although they have not protected these societies from infamy.
There are abundant resources and paths for lies in the dissemination of fake news, generated solely by the rhetorical force that cultivates anger among groups of voters who feel isolated and irrelevant. In political campaigns, algorithm technology companies use data analysis and artificial intelligence techniques to segment and manipulate groups of voters and accentuate social divisions. There is an abundance of raw material for the production line of chaos: resentment due to the feeling of obsolescence, and political and social irrelevance; fear of omnipresent risks coming from outside; and a sense of disbelief in institutions. In the words of Da Empoli, “if for Lenin communism it was “the Soviets and electricity”, for the engineers of chaos populism it is the child of the marriage between anger and algorithms” (15) (p. 88)
In the cautionary tale "The Waldo Moment", from the British series "Black Mirror", the main character is an animated "Waldo", controlled by a comedian who interacts with politicians, making caustic comments to expose them to ridicule and public aversion. Waldo becomes popular and begins to be taken seriously, as he incites animosity against representatives of the political system, who are already in clear disrepute. He thus becomes an "anti-political" figure, a technological creation devoid of humanity who manipulates public opinion against the characters of traditional partisan theater, a simulacrum of real-world characters. This moral tale refers to the ease with which it is possible to attract and confuse large masses through superficial entertainment to the detriment of essential political debate. In Europe, racist demonstrations are increasingly frequent and violent (26 - 28). In Hungary, anger is directed towards Jews and Gypsies, with brutality and deaths of citizens of the Roma ethnic group (27). The Jobbik party, with its neo-Nazi discourse, doctrine, and practices, obtained 1% of the vote with the slogan “It’s the Gypsies’ fault” – they also advocate the registration of special identities for descendants of Jews. Many members of the French National Front are anti-Semitic, believing that “France was on the wrong side of WWII”. Jean Marie Le Pen adds that the Ebola virus should be used to cleanse Europe of immigrants and other “impure people”. The Dutch “identitaires”, (29) deeply anti-Semitic, also advocate an open war on Islam. The German National Democratic Party is openly Nazi and has members suspected of supporting violent attacks (27). The “Austrian Freedom” advocates the forced deportation of Turks and non-Europeans. In Italy, with the victory of the far-right coalition in the 2022 elections, Giorgia Meloni came to power as prime minister. Meloni is a Eurosceptic leader of the “Brothers of Italy” (its patron is Benito Mussolini) who proposes anti-immigration policies, and the reduction of LGBTQ rights and access to abortion, using a well-known slogan: “God, country, and family” (27). In Greece, the Golden Dawn – openly Nazi and with leaders linked to criminal groups (30) – has been implicated in attacks on mosques and synagogues, and promotes the “Protocols of Zion” as true. The “True Finns” wage war against Islamic groups (considered “inferior”), glorify the alliance between Finland and Nazi Germany, and want the country out of Europe. The “Danish People’s Party” opposes any non-Nordic presence in Denmark, criticizing the control of the borders with Sweden, which they claim is “too permeable” to immigrants. The Danish affiliates encourage conflicts against Islamic groups to promote their extermination. The Swedish Democrats grew from 5.7% in 2010 to 20.5% in 2022, second only to the Social Democrats. Their growing popularity was due to the 2015 migration crisis, caused by the massive influx of refugees from the wars in Syria and Yemen.
In the United States, the anger is focused on Mexicans and Muslims, and is materialized in the slogans: “they steal our jobs, they change our way of life”. It is interesting to note that the new right-wing populists have sunk their discursive roots in the soil of the economy to project hate speech, although there is an economic fallacy summarized by the “Waldo Paradox” – it is not the most economically disadvantaged social segments, nor those most exposed to immigration and contact with foreign cultures who, as pointed out by Da Empoli, “have surrendered themselves to the Waldo bear hug” (15) (p.74). Voters with higher income levels, less vulnerable to unemployment, thus voted overwhelmingly for Trump, rather than for Hillary Clinton, in 2016. In Europe, xenophobic parties achieved their best results in regions where the demographic density of immigrants was scarcer. Arguments commonly linked to economics are put forward; however, in essence, they actually deal with an immaterial value: anger.

Conclusion
In the current context of infobesity and the hyperflow of information, the effort to inform about Science and clarify about vaccines is likely being supplanted by the mystifying power of Fake News. Perhaps our generation has lost itself in this “Media Age”, when the power of opinions and convictions seems to surpass the concreteness of facts. Perhaps, at this very moment, in some corner of the digital community, someone with a reliable reputation for information is reproducing a post about an astonishing or embarrassing fact, apparently genuine, but for some reason, perhaps in some way uncomfortably seductive. The post may deal with a revolting scenario, which appears out of nowhere, affecting everyone in such a way that not “liking and sharing” it becomes almost unthinkable. At this moment, for the “proto-journalist sapiens”, it is difficult to oppose the frenzy of dissemination of what is unworthy, unspeakable, revolting, or, in some way, different. In the realm of plausibility, disturbing phenomena, such as that described in this essay, take shape, blending symbolic abjection with the powerful impulse of the illusion of enlightenment fueled by anger. This volatile combination triggers extreme consequences, eliciting widespread attention and immediate public disclosure, often leaving out crucial details. In this environment, the imperative of urgent sharing dominates our actions, potentially compromising our ability to critically reflect and scrutinize the veracity of messages. When contemplating this peculiar scenario, it is essential to arm oneself with sensible considerations. One possible interpretation is that this occurrence represents a foul piece of manipulation, exploiting atavistic, deeply rooted, and repressed resentments within society. The generation of profits exploits these primitive instincts, invoking intense emotional reactions and generating division, social illness, and tons of money.
It seems to be common sense that people who participate in digital networks, in addition to seeking exposure, offer and consume worldviews and perspectives aligned with their own concerning things and events in the world – in the ambivalence of proto-reporters and public opinion feeding off of each other. The Internet is populated by political analysts, film experts, technology experts, and authorities on any subject who emerge at a frenetic pace in the dispute for spaces of relevance in the cartography of the spectacle. The number of words added to the usual lexicon of the Internet, in addition to being impressive due to the breadth of topics, is also worrisome due to the uncomfortable feeling of “imminent ignorance” – that which we will supposedly reach all too soon, as long as we are not incessantly updated by the hyperflow of the spectacle.
In the second decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves inundated by monumental volumes of redundant or irrelevant content surrounding the gems of critical thought. Hundreds of terms and anglicisms proliferate, becoming common slang. Thousands of techno-jargons added to conversations in the public sphere stimulate the latent feeling of insipience as a harbinger of unimportance. Such feelings provide the conditions for the spontaneous generation of resentful bubbles of epistemic exile, segregated and nourished by angry perspectives that conjure the most ferocious extremisms. In this context, in addition to the relevance of environmental devastation resulting from extreme climate events, would it also be important to consider the devastation of our critical sense producing extreme political and health events? Cycles of hatred often arise under circumstances of threats between gaps in confidence in the future or derived from frustration due to expectations of less strict living conditions. The digital networks of lies, like midwives, await the contractions of traumatic moments through panic and public commotion. They did not generate resentment or conceive lies, although they were designed to distill resentment, awaiting the tragic eruption of violence. Aversion and hatred engender lies, engagement, and profits. Intolerance generates clicks, as well as cultivates and brings together users with affected critical judgment, who perceive themselves as irrelevant and outdated. We are beings of a socially fragile nature; our well-being depends, to a great extent, on the acceptance and embracement of those around us. Unlike other animals, humans are born defenseless and without the ability to survive, and this continues for many years. From the beginning, their survival depends on connections established with others. The power of attraction of social networks is based on this primordial structuring element; every like is a reaffirmation of the Self, like a mother’s gentle caress.
Alternatively, such circumstances could be seen as a timely warning, a cautionary tale highlighting the dangers that lurk in our increasingly complex, hostile, and incomprehensible world. It serves as a reminder of the formidable challenges we face as a society, impelling us to reflection and action amidst the swirling chaos. Ultimately, discerning the true nature of such occurrences requires careful examination, unraveling the web of intentions, motivations, and outcomes. Reasonable considerations prompt us to explore the underlying motives of symbolic vileness and encourage us to reflect on broader implications, considering the potential impact on social cohesion, individual wellbeing, and our collective progress as a civilization. Perhaps in environments permeated by full communication and collaboration between professionals/educators and the community, the power of hate speech, the denialism of science, and conspiracy theories will weaken, giving way to a new Renaissance.

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