A grifter is a person who enriches themselves by tricking other people. I will describe some human activities as grift that maybe we don’t usually think of in these terms, but we should, because the definition fits. In referring to the present as the “age of the grift,” I mean exactly that—we live in an era where cheating, in a wide variety of ways and venues—but ultimately for financial gain, as that is how we generally measure success in this era—is easier to do, harder to catch, and more incentivized than ever before. It comes down to how we believe, learn, think, and structure knowledge.

The real issue that confronts me when I consider the role of social media is the extent to which it may reproduce or facilitate “binary” thinking—“this” or “that”; us and them (my least favorite four-letter word is “they”). It’s hard to say something with nuance and qualification in a tweet. Memes, propaganda, and conspiracy theories do well in this sort of environment because they stimulate our brains in certain sorts of ways that cause instant, unreflective emotional reaction—it takes just a second to share or post something that viscerally stimulates but often hours to properly examine the claims being made. Those willing to engage in the work of carefully and skeptically examining claims, to be “informed and not just opinionated,” are perpetually disadvantaged in this kind of media environment; truth is the first and biggest casualty. That we talk admiringly now about “his truth” or “your truth” or “their truth” and telling, or seeking, “the truth” starts to sound quaint and old-fashioned reflects the kind of world that this media atmosphere has created.

There is a reason I tell this story, besides getting something personal off my chest or challenging stereotypes. A lot of this comes down to time and how I used it. Since I quit social media back in November, followed more recently with deleting numerous games and apps from my smartphone, I have noticed many disturbing parallels to when I quit partying in terms of how my life has changed. I think about what my late academic advisor and friend Ben Agger wrote over a decade ago about how smartphones were changing the ways we interacted with each other, how we perceived time, and even our biological rhythms and cycles. He called it iTime, a blurring of boundaries between private and public, of work and leisure, of day and night. It has, consistent with his theories, unfolded as a constant battle for “eyeballs” or attention which has the effect of “dopamining” society, as philosopher Gerald Moore has recently discussed, in which the machinery of profit-making is turned ultimately on hijacking the reward-mechanisms of the human brain via increasingly sophisticated technological interventions (i.e. “screen culture”).

I do not believe. That is a complete sentence. I am not a nihilist. In fact, no one is a nihilist because nihilism doesn’t make sense—to attack, or defend, a viewpoint, you have to have standards of truth (what is), morality (what ought to be), or both—the very things nihilism is defined by rejecting. What I mean is that as soon as I discover a new idea inspires or fascinates me, I set to work trying to figure out how it might be incomplete or wrong.

This isn’t an attempt to solve a problem: the problem I raise is moral, not technical, and therefore cannot be solved by technical means. This also isn’t an attempt to create another evil “they” to shift blame for my own missteps and incompetence onto, be it soci@l med!a or other manipulations of public opinion; I see the moralistic hypocrisy of that, and I reject the idea that we human beings, you and I, are just pawns or unwitting dupes. This is a “me and it” problem, not an “us and them” problem, if you like; if I am right, then I am a sucker, as much as any and more than some, and some time away to clear my head should make that evident. I can’t singlehandedly change the game, but I can leave it for a while.

I am going to start with an unfashionable idea: there is such a thing as truth, and over time, people who are willing to put in the time, effort, and hard work can get closer to it. I don’t care if anyone agrees with me, because if I am right, then the practical consequences of seeking truth (or not) will happen sooner or later regardless. I’m much more interested in why this idea has become unfashionable.