If truth be told, this post truth trash is one big inconvenient lie

Post truthism has been gestating in the underbelly of the internet for more than a decade, writes Suzanne Harrington

So we live in a post truth world. Post truthism, which sounds like Orwellian doublespeak, only more stupid, is now our official way of being. It’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year – well, two words, but let’s not get distracted. It shouldn’t come as that much of a shock that “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” – how the OED defines ‘post truth’ – is now how we make mass political decisions. Brexit and Donald Trump are 2016’s most significant post truth achievements. See what I did there? I called Brexit and Trump’s election “achievements.” That’s what post truth journalism looks like. You’re welcome.

In truth – no, really - post truthism has been gestating in the underbelly of the internet for more than a decade. We are all avatars now, selfie-made creations of our own shallowest projections, #fabulous, #amazing, #brilliant. It used to just be online dating sites where people were – and remain – hilariously post truth, where short men are tall and fat women slim, and everyone is 10 years younger, where speaking several languages means you can order a beer in Spanish, and ‘enjoys relaxing’ translates as telly-addled horizontalist. Words like dynamic, outgoing, and bubbly are as meaningless as a can of Warhol soup.

Of course the original post truth document, back in the days of analogue, was the CV. You could lie your head off, and take a gamble that nobody would find out. Add a year saving gorillas in Uganda here, another helping out at an orphanage in Ulan Baator there, and hope your referees were too distant to ever disclose that actually they had never heard of you, because during this time you were lying on the sofa, smoking fragrant cigarettes and staring at your foot. This kind of thing used to be called ‘lying’ – today it would be called ‘career enhancement’.

We have rebranded racism as something called ‘nativism’, and fascism as ‘alt right’, making it sound as harmless as a music genre. Post truth means gigantic brazen faced whoppers routinely told by politicians so versed in the art of spin that they no longer know which way is up, and lie unhesitatingly. Not all of them, of course. The ones who do attempt truthfulness are dismissed as mad, like Bernie Saunders or Jeremey Corbyn, or tiresome – remember Al Gore and his documentary An Inconvenient Truth?

In this era of post truth, it’s much easier to make climate change a Chinese hoax. You know, a plot by untrustworthy faraway people who look different from us, and who wish to do us harm. Post-truth’s greatest victory – by which I mean, its greatest disaster – is the further splitting of humanity, divided by fake fear. Post truth politicians, who once would have been fired, are now being promoted to highest office. How refreshing, how exciting. Which is post truth for FUUUUUCCCKKK!