It's L that's essentiell

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This PROPAGENDA segment, which is dived in three sections, ¹⁄₂ (of) humanity (this page), SHORTSIGHTEDNESS and LIFE, is the core of essentiell.org.

If we recapitulate how the "ABOUT...Why essentiell.org?" section on the START page ended, we wrote something like this:

1/ A portion of all of us, previously called 'half' in a rough estimate of quantity but also 'indecent' in a character trait, exhibit an intellectual or

cognitive

anomaly

in terms of the ability to both describe our common reality but also in the ability to rationally analyze and absorb true information.
2/ Unfortunately, not only 'half', but all of us seem to be

hardcoded

to shortsightedness (=> SHORTSIGHTEDNESS), and as number...
3/ ...how the two incentives can correlate with the Drake Equation and more specifically the term L in that equation. Is it essential? (=> LIFE)

If a reader is coming to this section for the first time, we recommend not following the links to the sections below. For the sake of context, read 'top-down'.

¹⁄₂

Recent years have seen an explosion of ideas based on polarization, prejudice, and lies. Only half of us seem to realize this

¹⁄₂ takes 4 minutes to read

NARCISSISM

We see a growing proportion of affirmation-seeking 'clowns' with inferiority complexes who express prejudice, ignorance, isolationism and indecent behavior.

NARCISSISM takes 13 minutes to read

INTERNET

Information that has an inherently polarizing and prejudiced agenda spreads faster and more than information with an inherent positivism.

INTERNET takes 8 minutes to read

THE DANGER

What is the danger of the combination of easily spread lies and indecent cognitively impaired people with the urge to spread it?

THE DANGER takes 6 minutes

¹⁄₂ (OF HUMANITY)

In the introduction to this site, it was emphasized that we only worry about half of humanity. That is not true. We worry about the whole of humanity, but in different ways. We worry, as in being afraid of, those we have called indecent. And we worry, as in being concerned for, those who are decent.

As an example of the first type of worry, or fear, we have all seen that a growing portion of humanity possesses a range of alarming ideal strategies and personal traits such as prejudice, contempt for science, nationalism, and a

cognitive resistance

to an objectively true worldview.

Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), a Holocaust survivor and a well-known Austrian psychologist and philosopher, thought he could distinguish two

basal

personality types of humanity and he therefore wanted to categorize us as belonging to either the decent or the indecent, "...and they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people." He even went as far as calling these two tratis as two "races". We went through this and also our definition of decency and indecent here and if you want a quick recap

here

.

Of course, we already know that there are different types of people and that some of our fellow sisters and brothers are not always nice. However, we believe that it goes deeper than that and that it is clearly possible to distinguish two types of

cognition

, or sense, where the possession, (or absence of depending on how you look at it) of a type of sense means that one is acting indecently. Although it is a simplified division, we have good reasons to assume that it is a correct distinction. We will show both why there are good reasons for that assumption but also that there are of course different shades of indecency.
Having said that, perhaps the most important distinction, and at the same time the most clear and obvious dividing line that can be made in our time, is that between categories of groups that support various current and populist ideologies and their

realpolitik

.

Today we have a number of world leaders who, in all practical politics, exhibit a content that diverges from the definition of decency that was discussed in the ABOUT section on the START page. To make the distinction clear, with the same

heuristic

approach we have already mentioned, we assign the groups that actively support Bolsonaro, Duterte, Orban, Salvini, Kaczyński, Trump etc. – as indecent.
Now Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election, but Trump and his dubious legacy of making lies, narcissistic boasting and polarizing conspiracies both everyday food and an ideology in the form of

'Trumpism'

, make him and the ideology extremely relevant, not least through his spectacular return to the presidency in 2025. 'Trumpism' lives on not only in American society.

We are a large part of the world's population that is struck by an almost paralyzing wonder that people with a worldview and reason-based argumentation that is difficult to separate from a normal 7-year-old, can be democratically elected to the highest offices of countries. The reference to '7-year-old', is not even meant as a fun metaphor, click here. These leaders have the support of, from ∼20% (Italy's Salvini, 2018) to ∼80% (Philippines' Duterte, 2019) of their respective populations. We have previously landed in the approximate amount of 'half' or '¹⁄₂' (of humanity) but the figure is likely between 20-50% in the Western world.
Interesting reading about populism and the globally increasing populism as a political ideology in the Western world, in a report from the 'Tony Blair Institute for Global Change', here.

That fact makes the word polarization not even feel enough for many. When you hear both supporters of these world leaders and the leaders themselves open their mouths and argue and describe their values and views on our world, and compare it with our own view of decency and our same worldview, you see an abysmal difference between two types of cognition, sense, empathy and perception of reality. The big problem is that it doesn't stop there, but the same abysmal polarity also crystallizes in a total lack of goodwill towards one's fellow human beings and a, at times, almost hateful view of global understanding, solidarity and inclusive ideals. Together with the narcissistic ingredient of also feeling a fundamental and deep drive to spread and seek affirmation for these ideals - of course we are afraid of these people.

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Narcissism

The starting point we have taken and which we are now unfolding further is that the world, to an increasing extent, consists of democratically elected regimes and leaders we call indecent. The reason for this is that they base their political agenda on polarization and made-up stories in order to promote the said agenda and thereby expand their power. In order to create credibility for the made-up stories, their ideology also contains a pronounced contempt for science that is motivated and balanced by another comparable research methodology - their own, or the people's 'common sense'. An unhinged use of global resources can thus be justified without consequences because the warnings of science are still just 'fake news'.
This populism has only one purpose at its core, and that is to gain self affirmation to satisfy a deeply rooted inferiority complex.
We at the editorial team at essentiell.org are just laypeople in psychology/psychiatry and there is no documented evaluation of the leaders we are talking about, but we assume that it is at least the common view within these fields that the indecent people and leaders we are talking about exhibit traits that are clinically similar to Narcissism and in many cases also a number of other sociopathic behaviors patterns. Support for this view can be found here and here.

essentiell.org considers it frightening because the character traits do not stop with the leadership and regimes but large parts of the Western world's populations seem to exhibit similar types of traits and express the same ideology. The personality trait and diagnosis of Narcissism have already been shown to be on the rise significantly in society, which the American Psychological Association described here in 2011.
It could be shown that narcissistic traits are clearly on the rise and that they seem to follow a trend: The better times in the (world) economy and the societal welfare, the greater the proportion of the population exhibits Narcissistic traits.

In the article, "Narcissism" is used in its clinical meaning, while we use the term in more general terms and which fall under the common understandings of the terms: egocentric / extroverted / manipulative / grandiose / self-absorbed / attention-seeking / affirmation-seeking.
Narcissists occupy a large share in our categorization of ¹⁄₂ of Humanity and are therefore important in the context in which we insert the concept.

The

dipolar

manifestation of human character Viktor Frankl classified as indecent and decent, respectively, we claim can be unambiguously distinguished even in our time.
The obvious consequence we draw is that those we call 'indecent' will always be a threat to a development that points towards a sustainable and long-term prosperous humanity. And then 'sustainable' is not primarily meant as the term is used in a description of climate problems but 'sustainable' for us Humanity and how we as a civilization live and behave - namely that the same way we live today should not be subject to doubt whether that way will also work in 500 or 5000 years.

To be categorical and without gray scale at the outset, the consequence of the personality type 'indecent' is obviously destructive for a society. Since this group lacks an

adequate

intellectual toolbox to evaluate factualities, they also become incapable of analyzing chains of cause-and-effect and thus also the results of these. That type of

cognitive dissonance

prevents a common and constructive debate promoting objectively sustainable incentives, which of course torpedoes the

polemic

about the 'sustainability' of Humanity.

A psychiatrist might object to the above, almost cognitively dysfunctional description, and argue that even narcissists can absolutely be high performers and do a good job.
Yes, but that's not really what we mean by these people being cognitively 'dysfunctional'. We mean a different "Job" than the 9-to-5. The "Job" with a capital J that we should function as a sustainable society and still have a society in those 500 or 5000 years. That Job description is not on the map for these people. Their Job, both in the big and the small, is to ensure that the supply of affirmation is continuous and large enough. Their Job by definition does not care about factuality or whether an action or an approach is Sustainable and Long-term. Their Job can not objectively analyze a causal chain or make statements that are true. That is not even secondary, it is completely irrelevant. It's all about feeling better than those you communicate with and giving the appearance of success and confidence.
Thus, it's being 'dysfunctional' with respect to the Job of paving the way for our future generations. It's 'dysfunctional' with respect to the Job of actually arguing and act for the long-term optimization of Humanity's well-being

Here's a clip that is not meant as a scientific analysis of Trump's Narcissism but a fun and absolutely illuminating feature from the Jimmy Kimmel Show!

The implication of the above is the unfortunate consequence that people with a strong need for affirmation and social reward also have an inherent drive to compensate or fulfill that need by striving towards affirming-giving positions and environments with power and the exercise of power. Everything from political, corporate, government positions to founders of (hate) sites and contributors to forums and blogs on social media. The drive towards both leading and prominent positions is inherent in the character trait even if "prominent positions" is loosely defined where a need for affirmation can very well be satisfied by a small YouTube channel with 10 followers.

If we accept the simplified picture of the world being divided into two "races" as proposed by Victor Frankl, there are still many of us, supposedly (the other) 'half', who realize the narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness exhibited by many leaders in the world.
The problem lies in the fact that we have that character-defined gap between us and those who exhibit a cognitive functional variation and thus find ourselves in different arenas in our polemic of advocated ideals. It sounds like an unnecessary

tautology

but in the arena of the decent, where the need for public affirmation lacks, it's difficult to get someone on stage. This inherent difference in personality type makes it difficult to respond and publicly debate as we are not driven by the same incentive to be seen and receive confirmation. (Which may sound like a strange sentence from the founders of a website but we emphasize that we do this so that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren...will have a society to live in, not for a .

So far, we have used a relatively rough categorical division of human characters into decent and indecent. Before the next section, which deals with why it is proven easier to spread false information than truthful information, we must therefore nuance this overly rough division.
We probably know some people who believe in conspiracy theories or that science in general and Global Warming in particular is just nonsense and fake news and may even actively try to spread their beliefs. At the same time, we would certainly not say that they are indecent and equate them with immorality or malice.

In a discussion program on the Swedish National radio P1, 'Filosofiska Rummet' (the philosophical room), Erika Bjerström, former foreign correspondent in the USA, addressed what we have called 'fact resistance' or also 'confirmation bias'. The theme for this particular program was Polarization (link to the program, only in Swedish).
Other participants in the discussion were Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, professor of political science, and Åsa Wikforss, professor of theoretical philosophy.
Erika Bjerström brought up an interview she had conducted with an upper middle-aged man who lived and worked on his ranch in Texas. She interviewed the man in his capacity as a Trump supporter and thus anti gun control. That is, he opposed stricter regulations on possession, purchase and the right to carry (fire)arms.

The background was that Australia's conservative government on two occasions, in 1996 and 2002, introduced new laws (NFA) that involved greater regulation of gun licenses and the right to carry firearms. It offered the surrender or giver of firearms completely anonymity and he/she was also being economically reimbursed.
A difference was seen relatively quickly in the frequency of murders, school shootings and suicides, which had previously been thought to be linked to the more liberal rules on those rights. For example, the murder rate per 100,000 population fell from 1.6 in 1996 to 1.0 in 2004 (although this include all murders regardless of method). However, comparing figures from 1990, and specifically firearm-related murders, to 2014, shows a 57% decline. The decline in school shootings was even more pronounced, and suicides by firearm also declined. References to the figures can be found here and here.

Hence, when the stricter restrictions on gun control were introduced, there was a significant difference, and a decline, in deaths caused by firearms.
When Erika Bjerström had mentioned this to the man and wanted him to comment on the fact that stricter gun control laws actually led to fewer fatal incidents such as school shootings and suicides and how this contrasted with the man's more permissive gun control laws, the man had looked confused and not responded directly.
However, the interview continued and just before Bjerström was about to leave the ranch, the man had excitedly grabbed her and asked her to come back into the house so he could show her something. Once inside again, he strode purposefully to his computer and, almost apologetically, pointed to the screen that showed Google results regarding the effects of Australia's stricter gun control laws. He said: "- I'm sorry but I don't think you have the right information about that. "He pointed to some Google results that showed that both violence and suicide had actually increased in Australia.
Erika Bjerström had reviewed the hits, and as she said in the program, "- I saw right away that this man and I will never be able to meet in a real discussion because we simply have such fundamentally different bases for information gathering and what we perceive as objectivity and truth."
The man's Google hits, from top to bottom, had been from sites like 'Breitbart' and 'Fox News' and similar 'Alt-Right' news sites, while her information base came from studies that analyzed the actual numbers. That is, the articles that were written with a scientific methodology as a basis. But she understood that the man would never trust such an information base and saw Fox News and Breitbart as the irrefutable truth and at the same time the sources that "reveal" how things really are.
He had an intrinsic view that all information from the so-called "fake media" only had one purpose and that was to, together with science, ally itself with the liberals, synonymous with the establishment, to access and maintain a political agenda.

The man, also a Trump supporter, would probably not be considered indecent in the opposite relation to the definition of decent that we made earlier. Is he one in the pile of evidence for the "cognitive dissonance" that we used earlier with the meaning that we think we see that distinct groups' view of an authentic reality is distorted due to a total renunciation of the intellectual instruments required to analyze basic causal reasoning? Or, less whimsically put, is the man described in the example above just an idiot?
Regardless, he would hardly be put in the basket of confirmation-seeking everyday narcissist.

We thus make this a partly semantic question. Doing something intentionally indecent, that is, one realizes that one's action is objectively indecent but carries it out anyway – we could categorize that as 'evil'. And 'evil' is a subset of indecentness. One can therefore still be indecent without being evil.
We get away with only having parts of indecentness that do not overlap with evil or immorality by including another distinction regarding indecentness:
We connect the cognitive functional variation that we have devoted a large part of essentiell.org to describing, to indecent behavior because the 'function' itself is in relation to our civilizational survival. That is, since we link the very measure of indecency to the degree to which a behavior actively or implictly oppose the sustainability or survival of Man, it justifies that we can also categorize people like the man in the example as indecent.
That is a serious an important distinction so we re-iterate this:

That is, since we link the very measure of indecency to the degree to which a behavior actively or implictly oppose the sustainability or survival of Man, it justifies that we can also categorize people like the man in the example as indecent.

We thus have a range of personality types under 'indecency' that overlap with each other but, using the example above as a description, not all of them overlap with 'evil'. In addition to confirmation-hungry people who demand confirmation of themselves at all costs and who have no limits whatsoever to satisfy this need on the internet or via social media platforms, one can fall into any of the following categories for being indecent:

You may lack education or be otherwise incapable, even if you tried, of analyzing even the simplest causal connections. (The observant may object, however, that such a person, in the absence of intellectual instruments, would statistically do as much indecent as decent.)
You may live in a social context, both physical and digital, where it would cost too much to have a different opinion. Even if you realize that the opinions you express are untrue or indecent, or perhaps you don't care which. And by 'cost' we mean risking losing friends and a social connection.
You may be stuck in the incredibly strong, and inherently polarizing, algorithms that mean that no matter how you search for information online, you are only reached by information that you have always received the information from before and that the algorithm 'knows' generates more clicks from you ('knows' = as in being programmed to recognize).
You may have completely lost trust in what goes by the epithet 'Mainstream Media' and consciously only stick to a description of reality provided by the Media that paradoxically is the one that is not true, or even tries to be. "Paradoxical", in the sense that such a person's belief that the 'Main stream media' has a hidden and subversive agenda, entails a pattern of action where one turns to the Media that really does have a hidden agenda and (un)consciously comes up with untruths. This point partially overlaps with point 3. The man and the Trump supporter in the example probably belong to this category or the point above.
( You may just be suffering from low self-esteem and are looking for whatever validation you can get, wherever it comes from. One easy way to get it is through the spread of 'indecency' online. And we will cover this in detail in the next section 'Internet')

The last point is put in parentheses because your desire to get confirming 'likes' by spreading polarizing lies may not be done with a fundamentally 'evil' intention, but the end result will still be indecent. Although, as we said, we will address this in detail in the next section, the reason behind this indecentness is that it turns out that the information that spreads fastest and to the greatest extent is false information and not infrequently with an agenda that is polarizing, intolerant and also, as it will turn out, information that contains elements that arouse disgust.

More (easy-to-read) information about conspiracy theories and vivid and bloated (false) made-up stories on the Internet and why certain people or personality types are more attracted to them, can be read here and here, both from PsychCentral®.

With that clarification about our categorical division of humanity into decent and indecent and where the latter category does not always include people who are 'evil', the consequence of these people's polarizing cognitive toolbox and unwillingness to accept true information becomes a dangerous consequence for us all.

As a final example that there is justification for the division and that these people, strangely enough, actually share the same aforementioned flawed intellectual toolbox:

Imagine that we have a randomly selected group of 100 people, or a 1000, it doesn't matter.
Everyone is asked the question: "Do we have human-caused global warming today?"
"Those of you who answer 'yes' gather in a group on the right and those of you who don't believe it stand in a group on the left".
The group of 100 people forms in the proposed division depending on their answers. The two groups are then asked more questions:
"Is science about as good as common sense at solving problems?"
"Is it more dangerous to get vaccinated than not to get vaccinated?"
"Is there a possibility that the Earth is flat?"
"Would deadly violence decrease if we relaxed gun control regulations and let everyone who wants to have a gun?"
"Do you think that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election due to fraud on the part of the Democrats?"
"Do you think you are a little better than others at seeing consciously hidden structures and networks in society, which the rulers try to hide?"
Do you think that humans have an evolutionary relationship with today's primates?"
"Have humans been to the moon?"...etc.
Even though the True answer to the questions alternates between 'yes' and 'no', surely you as a reader are as convinced as we are that the group division that was formed after the first question would largely be maintained through all the questions? The only thing that will happen is that the same two groups will go between right and left. It will be very unlikely that someone from one group will suddenly join the other group.

And with that said, it seems to be an inherent, hard-coded* characteristic, to be incapable of a True analysis of reality, and it is time that we realize that and actively act accordingly. Our entire existence may depend on it.

*We have used the word 'hardcoded' in many places and it is actually a sloppy expression as it implies only an inevitable genetic connection. We are fully aware of the complex interaction between heredity and environment and how one shapes one's personality from child to adult. What we really mean is that as an adult one is hardcoded, regardless of the relationship between heredity and environment, and is in the basket of indecency we have defined and from which one, consciously or unconsciously, has no intention whatsoever of getting out.

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Internet and Information

The Internet and Social Media have proven to be a superb platform for the indecent to fill their empty bucket of affirmation need by spreading fantastic made-up stories to get a . It may seem obvious depending on the nature of the medium but also

reciprocal

in the sense that it is just as easy to counter the false with the true information and also spread decent agendas. But oddly enough, that is not the case at all. As we are about to see.

With the Internet and the development of social media, both the spread and accessibility of information have increased explosively. This opportunity both spreading and accessing information has been a natural part of everyone's lives for some 30 years now and even if the medium itself does not necessarily make life more fun, the Internet at least in theory brings fast and easy access to fun.
Just by considering these few adjectives of what the Internet has meant to our daily lives, it is also easy to realize that if you want to spread the thoughts that you yourself consider absolutely fantastic to other people who have not yet understood how fantastic your thoughts and ideas are, the Internet and all social platforms are absolutely excellent mediums.

However, there is a disappointing aspect when it comes to information flows:

Information that has a False and Polarizing agenda in terms of content, seems to have wings with jet engines.

And it turns out that it is even worse than that.
A published study (link below) by a research group from MIT in the USA has investigated how False information spreads in comparison to True on Twitter^® (the study was made while it still was Twitter). Here it was shown that False information not only spread 10 to 20 times faster than true information, regardless of topic and issue, but also that a false statement had a 70% higher probability of being retweeted than a tweet with a true statement.

Isn't that strange?

Since this text was originally written, ^™ has become ^™ but we will keep expressions such as "tweet", "re-tweet" etc. for the sake of clarity. The piece of information that is objectively proven to be "fake news", is the piece of information that spreads the fastest and to the most people. Read more about the MIT article here. Åsa Wikforss also addresses this phenomenon together with the concept of 'Fact Resistance' in a very interesting lecture here.

It seems that both the sender and the receiver of this information have inherent characteristics that seek polarization and xenophobia. Or rather, we all seek a sense of inclusion and affirmation from a group we identify as our own. The effect of a strong need for affirmation that is indecent is that we reinforce our inclusion by excluding and labeling other groups negatively. We will develop this later in the text.
Looking at the article from MIT, mentioned above, it could be shown that True information could be derived from the following three characteristics:

- a (safe) feeling of recognition
- trust in the information
- indifference or even sadness for the content

While False information was characterized by::

- something new, unknown. feeling of novelty
- a drive to share and be the first with this particular unknown
- a feeling of outrage or disgust

False information also tends to be more spectacular and contain many large adjectives and vivid descriptions. The latter feels reasonable since false information paints a picture whose framework is not held back by the true and thus finite number of informationa parts and moments that define something that has actually (already) happened. What can also be seen as a pattern in information that is quickly shared, is that this information also contains polarizing parts. That is, the information as such is created with a content where one easily identifies with a 'we' that contrasts with an equally clear 'they'. Not infrequently with something positivist that ties 'we' together and something outrageous (disgusting) that is connected with 'they'.

It is easy to draw parallels to psychiatrist Anders Hansen (whom we have already talked about), where he addresses our search for truth and that our (in)ability to accept something that is true, depends to a large extent on the social consequences of that acceptance. We belong, it turns out, to an extreme extent, rather to a social context and to a social group that shares one's view of truth and values than to act in accordance with the acceptance that that view objectively turns out to be untrue. Because the direct consequence of a change from position X, which previously defined belonging to group X, to position Y, is that our position, acceptance and perhaps even encouraged belonging to group X, is lost.

But why does False and polarizing information spread so much faster and reach so many more people?

Or to ask the question differently and also include the characteristics above that people put on True and False information.
Why is information that:
1/ upsets you and/or fills you with disgust or
2/ evokes a feeling of antagonism between groups of people where you yourself are part of an 'us' against 'them', or
3/ gives you a feeling of being the first with the information..
...spread to a greater extent and also faster?
It is important that we understand this and it may therefore be illuminating to rephrase it from the other direction and also approach the point this paragraph is intended to have – We should perhaps not formulate it as a why is this information being spread more and faster but rather by whom? (although "whom" also answers the question "why" of course...

A True or False information flow does not have any inherent peculiarity in itself, it is only a semantic attribute on the same flow that is intended to label the truth content. It is thus the polarizing agenda together with the characteristics listed above, which is the jet engine that drives the rapid spread. A false information flow that paints a contradiction and attracts a person's sense of belonging and a 'we' (versus 'them'), is therefore the very reason why the information is shared more and faster.

I.e for a given information data we prefer the feeling of outrage before the feeling of (safe) recognition. We prefer a driev to share before only trusting the information and we prefer the feeling of novelty bedore indifference - regardless of the actual truth contect of that information data.
We humans thus seem to be both particularly drawn to polarizing and abhorrent stories and we also cannot help sharing these stories. Or at least we are all faced with the choice to share when we are exposed to a false information flow and experience one of the characteristics of this "..a feeling of being first with the information". In such a given situation, it is up to a person who has that feeling to also act. And that is where we land with "whom".

Giving in to that impulse, to spread false and polarizing information, is considered indecent by essentiell.org.

The three described feelings or characteristics of False information are general feelings that arise when one encounters that information and are thus also experienced by those who read the same information but do not share it. However, it is only that False information spreads faster and more than True, not that True does not spread at all. Our hypothesis is therefore that it is the indecent who, when they encounter vivid, extraordinary, novel (False) information, choose not to engage the cognitive filters we normally have to analyze and determine whether something is consistent with a True perception of reality. The indecent are thus so overcome by excited anticipation of an opportunity to feel a little more than others and to sit on information that no one else has, that spreading and clicking the 'share button' thus precedes the act of putting the information in the False folder and moving on.
As a decent person would do.
When the indecent person shares the False information, they also choose to create a group with those they share the content with, an 'us' and 'them' (who do not receive the information). This means that, like our previous allegorical 7-year-old, he can't get over himself of excitement and just can't keep his fingers in check and has to do that action that he probably already knows will result in someone clicking in his virtual group of 'us'.

The drive of the obscene towards confirmation and an expectation of easily available confirmation, and the fact that the indecent apparently lack (or choose not to engage) the cognitive instruments to objectively analyze and filter data to categorize it as either true or false, also make them grateful and easily accessible prey for so-called 'Troll factories'.
Troll factories can consist of one or a few people working from their own computer at home or close to home. But regardless of the logistics, the motive is often purely economic with the 'author' as the sole recipient. You simply make money by creating made-up stories or news that generate the maximum number of 'clicks' and that is also exactly how the income is created, you make money directly per 'click'.
So the only incentive for the content itself is to inflate stories in a way that you know will create interest and thus clicks and thus money, so-called 'click bait'. And of course, you then choose stories that both have jet wings and reach the most people – that is, False, Polarizing and Abominable stories. The three main incentives to give wings to click-baits.

Troll factories can also be large, sometimes state-controlled, institutions such as the Internet Research Agency from Russia, which is most certainly pointed out by the FBI as the Troll factory that tried to influence the American election in 2016. Such factories therefore have a more political agenda even though they exploit the same False and Polarizing incentives regarding content and which give the content wings with jet engines. It is important to point out here that made-up stories are in no way a

'alt-right'

phenomenon, but there are also populist and radical left-wing movements that publish 'fake news' with a subversive agenda. Interesting reading about Troll Factories as both private contractors and large state-controlled institutions can be read here (The Guardian®) and here (LA Times®).

A further factor in this is that a large part of the information on the Internet is generated by AI-like programmed robots, 'bots', which learn to automatically write posts on blogs and answers in forums with a single goal, to create content that they, using your surfing history as background data, have 'learned' that you are likely to click on. However, the content does not necessarily have to be False, but the phenomenon accounts for approximately 40% of the entire Internet's information content, which makes it worth mentioning anyway. For those interested, we refer to two easy-to-read news articles in Al Jazeera and the New York Times™ respectively here (AJ) and here (NYT) .

Since this section was originally scripted, Troll-factories and regardless of the size and funding, has to a large extent been substituted by pod casts like "Joe Rogan" and the like. Joe Rogan is by far not the worst but the content is based on maxmizing viewers and therefor commersial interest from big companies. The content is based on guests coming and telling the most spectacular stories which is set up to fulfil the criteria of spreading fast and to as many people as possible.
As the editor writing this I actually watched a random show of Joe Rogan where he had a guest that was asked if he thought "Megalodons" still existed. "Megalodons" were a pre-historic, now extinct much larger version of the great white shark. The guest answered "I don't think, I knowthey still exist." When asked to verify this he stated that he was "previously employed by NASA's deep sea team" which regularly worked at depths of 30 000 feet (≈10 000m) and there he had seen things "you wouldn't belive" and it was like living in "outer space" and seeing things "They try to hide from you".
The guest follow up with gruesome stories about Megalodon killings and how it can tear ships apart. Obvious just gibberish for any person having a slight bit of education and equally obvious broad casting exactly the type of information a certain type of people just absorbs and within a minute has shared on his own social media platforms.
Maybe a month from then one of the people reached by the information that Megalodons still exist, happen to listen to a nature TV-show on National Geographic and hears a narrator speak about a fossil found from the extinct Megalodons. He immedialtely puts that information and TV-show in the fake-news bin since he also have heard that They tried to hide the fact that the Megalodons still exist. In his eyes the information that Megalodons still exists simply gains in trustworthiness since the narrator showed a fossil and also claimed that they were extinct. The narrator and the TV-show clearly belong to the "They" and he feels a sting of joy at being singled out as one (of the few) that actually knows the truth.
That's a possible and not a far fetched scenery of how false informations travels and spreds.
In truthfullness, Joe Rogan Show is not the worst by far since he actually also have guests that are credible and have "stories" that are true. But the idea and concept behind the pod cast is crystal clear.

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THE DANGER

Since false information has the ability to spread fast and to many, the commercialization of information as in News media and Pods casts have sky rocketed. The existing news media such as FOX has made its brand of being objectively false and many other news media has followed suit together with myriads af Pod Casts.
The section below goes through the danger for future generations of finding objectively true news. That is, if you even care to make the effort of actually access reputable and true news media it's a jungle and we risk a news media landscape where truthful media doesn't stand a chance compared to media presenting false and gruesome stories (at best). In a worst case scenario truthful media might not even exist since they are not comercially viable.
The section below can be scipped however and you don't need it to proceed to SHORTSIGHTEDNESS.

Oxford Dictionaries already chose the word 'Post-truth-era' as the Word of the Year in 2015 , with the justification that we now live under... 'circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals and personal belief'.

Why is this so dangerous?

Since the content on this site is intended to be suitable and understood even by young people from the end of high school onwards, we have, on the entire site but in this section in particular, chosen to be thorough.

A recapitulation of the two sections above shows that we have a large and increasing proportion of humanity who, consciously or not, choose not to engage their entire repertoire of cognitive and intellectual resources to create a true picture of reality. Or at most (or worst) are clinical Narcissists. This inferiority complex and constant need for affirmation creates a sole purpose in life to feel a deflated superiority to other people. We have categorically lumped these together as ¹⁄₂ (of) Humanity. Also that this group has, probably throughout our evolutionary history, behaved and continues to behave indecently.
Together with the fact that information that can be tagged with attributes such as False, Polarizing (and Disgusting) both spreads more and faster than normal True and realistic information, it also creates opportunities for the indecent to form strong, numerous and very active platforms and groups online and in Social Media.
Unfortunately, there are also more aspects that mean that future generations risk living in a media noise where it is almost impossible to get or find True information even if you actively look for it.
Below is a section about the difficulty for future generations to both be reached by True information but also that the very toolbox to ascertain whether a piece of information is True, risks containing the wrong tools or in the worst case not even proving to be a toolbox.
You can easily skip that and continue with the conclusion here.

If we assume that a generation is 25 years, our society consists of 3 generations if we assume an average lifespan of 75 years. These generations risk having fundamentally different perceptions of the reality we live in. Two generations still possess a framework of general education and a toolbox, shaped by their upbringing, that can deconstruct a True worldview. The problem is that focusing on, the enormous amount of, and click-bait strategies in and around today's media noise means that the youngest generation risks lacking an adequate toolbox to determine whether something is True or False.
And the reasons for this, we see, are two:

1/
Two generations of the three have lived in times when truth and lies have still been clearly separated in the flow of information we read and take in.
We (the two older generations) have of course been aware that, for example, politicians interpret statistics a little as they please and that the same politicians can have completely divergent opinions about the consequences of political decisions or ideas. Also that authorities, police and societal institutions can both maintain and make decisions on prejudiced or incorrect grounds.
However, we have also lived in times when we have had a media and journalistic agenda of examining and revealing this exercise of authority, or prejudiced and political decisions.
The same two generations have also lived in times when people who hold any form of leading position have been afraid of lying. People have been afraid of being exposed and investigative journalism has always been seen as a guaranteeing filter that we citizens are ultimately reached by true information. The main reason for this has been that there have been so few channels from which to obtain information. If someone was exposed as lying, 50-90% (depending on the country) of the population was reached by that information within 24 hours for that reason alone. Media that diverged from a main focus of true and objective investigative journalism have been few and marginalized.
Of course, the journalistic filters could have been politically colored and those filters could have had a statistical bias due to the same political coloration or personal preference of the investigator, but the compass needle has at least pointed towards the correct half of the true/false duality.

The youngest generation, of the three, today lives under a (social) media noise where approximately 40% of what that generation is exposed to on the internet is automated information from algorithms or so-called 'bots'. How much of this, and not just from 'bots' but the entire internet, is false is a very complicated question. The Pew Research Center has an interesting article here and also this very illuminating scientific article that also shows the difficulties in the methods themselves for measuring what is fake news and what is not.
A survey from PunditFact reports herein a survey from 2015 an example of how large a proportion of Fox News' content was false. The figure was already 60% back then and even though we are not going to write anything as untrue, we still guess that the figure is even higher today. The highly liberal MSNBC was better with 'only' 44% false content in the same survey but it is still a high figure and a bit of the point here under point 1/ under "why the youngest generation risks living their lives in a media noise where it is difficult to almost impossible to know what is True and False online".

In another article in Science Magazine^® here they have both looked at the truth levels in News online but also analyzed media habits in different generations. The most striking thing about that article, and most frightening in this context, is that it shows the fundamental disinterest the youngest generation has in News.
News sites are obviously a vanishingly small part of the youngest generation's media consumption:
1.1% of the total time spent on the internet was on a News Site in the age group of 18-24 years and only ¹⁄₃ of that, on what is called "Mainstream News", the rest on News Sites within the social platforms (designation according to the article).

Since we at the editorial team at essentiell.org are unsure whether 1.1% is a little or could even be normal since we do so much with mobiles, Pads and TV. Everything from texting to games and checking updates on Facebook. Could 1.1% be normal?
We therefore conducted an internal survey where we tried to note the time spent on news sites compared to the total time we used media for 3 days.
The result was for 4 people: 30.4%, 7.8%, 11.6% and 15.1%.
The article in question also showed that the younger generation also has a very broad definition of News that does not match that of older generations. The younger generation would call a Snap, Tweet or Facebook comment from a celebrity and their personal post or their shared views on contemporary economics, politics or science etc., as 'News'.
We find this very worrying and in a future perspective it is unclear what effect it will have on the society of future generations and the personal information navigation to a correct worldview. We who today belong to the two oldest generations may probably have difficulty seeing this difficulty because we have already grown up with frames of reference of news and an educational path where truth and falsehood are not so difficult to distinguish. Because it is clear that an educational path is constantly a mutual cross-referencing between a school system and all the information we process and filter in our everyday lives elsewhere.
Our, the older generations, general education is based on information that is usually truthful and filtered from the true plane of the aforementioned compass, but future generations will have a general education of a significantly murkier nature.

If we define News strictly as information about our society and contemporary times such as politics, economics, science or environmental issues and thus for the sake of the question: 'all information that lacks entertainment content', the younger generation is thus openly and carefreely completely uninterested in News.

The youngest generation thus grows up without a frame of reference for Reality and therefore does not, even if they wanted to , have any opportunity to navigate the social jungle to find 'Correct' and 'True' information. The reluctance is certainly also due to the immense amount of information and social platforms, so why even click or open an App for News when there is so much other 'fun'?
It was a long point 1/ so in summary before point 2/: we are going through why future generations will have difficulty both determining whether something is true but also navigating to this true information. As point 1/ we have established that the enormous amount of, loosely defined, 'information' available online has resigned the youngest generation to even wanting to absorb, let alone being able to find, information that is (admittedly) true.

2/
And that leads us into point two regarding why our new society risks distorting the latest, and also youngest, generation's perception of reality.
Social media algorithms.

What determines what type of information flows are displayed on the screen in front of us?
We can take a related example. The author of this text searched verbatim for: "Christopher Hitchens best of", on YouTube™. The 3 'best' hits had to do with the author's previous searches (and had absolutely nothing to do with Christopher Hitchens) and number 4 came 'Best of Christopher Hitchens Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 2' . Part 2 though, note that. The corresponding '...Part 1' came further down the list, despite literally the same name on the title except for Part 2.
When the author looked at 'Part 1' the author searched, not entirely unreasonably, for "Christopher Hitchens best of 2". There aren't that many 'Best of Christopher Hitchens...' so the 'Part 2' that came up as the best 'Christopher Hitchens...' hit in the initial search should be a reasonable best hit now...if not even more reasonable since 'Part 2' was now included in the search terms.
But that's not really how the algorithms work. The searched clip now came in 3rd place even though the first 2 actually had 'Christopher Hitchens' name in the clip.
The above despite the author having turned off all forms of 'personalization' and unchecked 'watch-' and 'search-history' in both Google and YouTube. Which could indicate that there are algorithms in the background that you can't opt out of.

Even though the following is just an editorial reflection, you can't help but wonder if the algorithms really give the 'Best' match in an objective sense? The algorithms certainly generate a maximum of clicks but only for the reason that they give 'Wrong' matches and you have to keep clicking on different menu choices and (re)writing things to limit your matches and get what you're looking for.

The algorithms that control the content we are reached by are so extremely strong in painting us into the bubble defined by what we have previously browsed, and generating a search result that makes us keep 'clicking', that even almost verbatim searches do not give us what we are looking for. And it is also worth noting that in the case of YouTube™, the algorithms are not only fed by previous search history on YouTube but also general browsing and information gathering on the Internet through Google's algorithms, since YouTube is a Google-owned company.

A SUMMARY OF THIS SECTION OF ¹⁄₂ of HUMANITY
To boil down the above section to the point we want to make, and at the same time show the danger we see in this:
If we take Sweden as an example, the two older generations have grown up with 1 to 4 channels on TV and 2 to 10 channels on Radio, seen between 1950 and the end of the 1990s. Nation wide this limited number of TV- and radio channles might for an american seen a small number but for a European it would likely more or less be accurate. In that media landscape, there is simply not much room for 'fake news'. There are always serious information channels, which you simply cannot avoid being exposed to because the supply was so limited. I.e. the limited number of media outlet and the popularity of the few channels that existed always brought you objective news and facts that you couldn't avoid. So any attempt to fabricate news and information with a hidden agenda was always considered and also in practical terms, a fringe setting.
But as we have already said, purely fabricated news was extremely unusual and the compass needle of existing media was pointed exclusively towards (at least) the same half of the plane as the truth. It was a completely different media landscape.

The whole concept of conspiracy ideas and "liberal-fake-news-media" and that these are part of a large conspiracy that by definition publishes 'fake' news', has arisen since the supply of media plat-forms and outlet has increased exponentially and people now globally have 1000s (several...) sites to access on the internet that go under the umbrella concept of 'News site'.
We give an example, with the USA as a base and the risk of untrue and polarizing News and that these both reach an audience faster and that it reaches a larger audience:

Say someone in the US publishes a story that a pizzeria in Washington DC has a hidden basement from which a secret pedophile network is organized that reaches the top of the Democratic party and involves both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The story is spiced up with blood sacrifices of children and drinking the blood and other bodily fluids in a satanic ritual. This entire pedophile network is also part of a so-called 'Deep State', a state within the state, consisting of the media, the scientific community and the liberal and democratic party establishment that actually controls the US behind the scenes.
No one would ever believe this nonsense, would they?
As we all know, this is not a made-up example, but a real example of how someone creates a 'made-up story' that has those jet-equipped wings. The above conspiracy theory is called QAnon and is a very vivid and real picture for many in the large neighboring country to the west and unfortunately and with great fear we see how this is 'news' among others. Thank God, there are still more people who consider it false than true, even though ¹⁄₃ of all Americans are open to the idea that this news "could be true" and 56% of all Republicans believe that it "is true", in a survey conducted by AXIOS here and by Forbes here.

"..56% of Republicans believe it is true." ...we hope a reader will be scared by that number.

Of those who are decent and still choose to use their cognitive resources for honest and objective analysis, it is still relatively easy to determine what is true and not, or if we are unsure after all, we know where to go to find true information.
But in a media landscape where the boundaries are blurred between the thousands of sites and portals on the Internet that are supposed to reflect a picture of Reality, how will information be found and received in two generations where all three generations have no frames of reference at all for News gathering?
Whether it is NBC News, Dagens Nyheter, CNN, Studio Ett on P1, The Guardian or any other information base that is serious, as I said, these will only be a vanishingly small number of platforms of serious news reporting out of thousands where everyone, even the serious ones, will have to compete to capture your interest with a juicy 'Click bait' on the other site you as a media consumer happen to be on.

It is also not only in the younger generation that traditional news media is losing audience. For example, the already mentioned flagship on Swedish national radio P1, 'Studio Ett', has a total of 7,000 listeners in a whole week according to statistics on Breakit and Mediapoden here. What does it matter that such an, in all excellent program, has elements and debates about 'Polarization', 'Fact Resistance' or Trump's crazy and ridiculous lies, when no one listens to the information? No one listens. We are moving towards times that will lack large, society-wide media institutions that guarantee an unambiguous and true platform not only aimed at, but also reached by a majority of the population.

Before we end this section with a section on what opportunities we have to address the concerns mentioned here, we make a brief summary of these concerns:
Not only does False and Polarizing information have an easier time reaching us all, it is also extremely difficult to burst the bubble of (dis)information we may have once accidentally put ourselves in. Once we have started to find ourselves on forums and news sites that have a bias towards a defined ideal or targeted agenda, we are stuck there. We thus have two factors that are the opposite of mutually exclusive and rather act in consensus so that the next generation, our future, is filled with fact-resistant people who have a, not just skewed, but a completely false picture of reality and who will also never be reached by, or even know how to look for, the probably fewer and fewer media outlets that are nevertheless trying to maintain a banner of sense, reality, reconciliation and truth.

What can we do? Or is the above even convincing as an incentive that the described reality really is a problem?

We believe that and the rest of us decent people must start recognizing the indecent as a real threat and not just believe that this will pass if we do nothing.

We are convinced that at least serious media still has an extremely important role in how this scenario will play out. It is of fundamental importance that the media does not hide the fact that those people (and especially in positions of power), who display indecent traits, are also categorized as such. Journalists have a great responsibility here and it is sometimes far too easy to stick to what is usually called the "PK fold", when one would rather remain neutral than call a duck a duck.

To take an example.
a clear, and in our opinion dangerous, way of categorizing such behavior was during the transfer of power after the 2020 elections in the US, between Trump and Biden. In a report on radio P1 and an analysis of Trump's reluctance to admit defeat in the 2020 election and thus, as is tradition in such a case, call the winner Joe Biden and congratulate him on his win, several Swedish media outlets, although the framing and exact wording in the reporting were different, stated that the reason for Trump's refusal to call and congratulate him was that Trump had 'went against the norm' throughout his term in office and that his signature had been to challenge 'conventions'.
No, hardly. Trump refused to admit defeat because there is no functional nerve in him that thinks at all in terms of appearing to be a loser. It has absolutely nothing to do with his reluctance to follow norms! He didn't want to call Biden because he is a full-blooded Narcissist, not a norm-rejecter.

One can see why a journalist would not want to label a person in power with a clinical diagnosis when one does not exist, but the indecent and falsified 'journalistic Rubicon' has long since been crossed and it is no longer possible to remain on one side of that barrier and make a decent resistance because there is no one left there to respond.

Now this section is finished and a reader is asked to continue with our other common thread here under PROPAGENDA, namely the section reflecting on our SHORTSIGHTEDNESS which we have regardless if we are decent or indecent.

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