We are increasingly living in a post-truth world. But what does it mean? Well, Oxford Dictionaries define it “as relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotions and personal belief”.
There is a reason why I am reminded of this term – or word. Post-truth was chosen as the word of the year in 2016, after the word’s proliferation in the first election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States. He was characterised as engaging in a ‘war on truth’.
There is no obvious connection between that 2016 word of Oxford Dictionaries and the word chosen this year, when Trump has been re-elected. In any case, the Oxford Dictionaries word for 2024 is ‘brain rot’. There were other words to choose from, such as ‘lore’, ‘demure’, ‘romantasy’, ‘dynamic pricing’, and ‘slop’.
‘Brain rot’ is a slang term for supposed mental damage done by overconsumption of trivial online content. It relates to how social media is being used in most countries of the world. We, in Pakistan, have our own problems in this context. And there have been reports this week to underline this issue.
Social media, of course, is an integral part of the lives of most people around the world, including in Pakistan. It serves many purposes. What has become a major concern is that it also dispenses disinformation, misinformation and fake news. The advent of Artificial Intelligence has changed the very nature........