Wednesday, May 16, 2018
feeling for story: dramatic appeal (value)
in emotional novelty
This is § b of “Section 3: Fake views exploit the appeal of valid drama.”
Why is a chid enchanted by fabulous prospects? Childlike appeal of fabulism (i.e., proffering fables) echoes fantastic cultural stories, once upon a time guided by mythologies that conceptualized worldviews which gave telic cohering and comfort to cycles of life. Such appeal in that kind of narrative echoes in “true” feeling of fictionality and in romanticism (widely conceived, including every mode of safe thrill). A tropological “realism” constitutes dramatic life.
Mostly, that’s nonconscious: Numinous appeal belongs to the things themselves, as if the appeal, mirroring one’s desire, is natural. As if we are intrinsically dramatists, surrounded by concealed intentions, desire for true feeling, inevitable revelation of malicious powers, and fates of others’ luck (bad, so likely; and good, so deserved for “me”). There’s endless risk because life is essentially mysterious (if not evil in contest with the good that “I” deserve).
Fiction that’s explcit about its fictionality is not fake narrative, though it invites regard of its invalidity as wholly valid. “Suspension of disbelief” is desired and served. Narrative that postures itself as wholly valid, but is false may be fiction, but not fakery. Yet, fakery that postures itself as news (or valid view) exploits a reader’s /listener’s unwitting desire for enjoyment through suspension of disbelief. One desires to believe.
And to be thrilled: Tropographical instability (resonance, uncanniness, numinousness) of narrative in a hyperNet sphere is exciting. “[F]ake news seems to be more ‘novel’ than real news” (source B). In the statistical study of all Tweets of the past decade, “fake news evokes much more emotion than the average tweet....Fake tweets tended to elicit words associated with surprise and disgust, while accurate tweets summoned words associated with sadness and trust, they found’” [B]. We don’t want to feel saddened, and “you” are a fool to trust—“surprise, surprise! Isn’t it disgusting?”
Next: Section 3c: “fake views as narrative mode of fakery throughout markets”
