Disinformation has a Soviet ring to it. With a sprinkling of Kafka. Wrapped in corporate PR. And shrouded in military-industrial complex.
Such is the prevalence of disinformation today—in every walk of life—and the success of disinformation today, that we seldom even hear the word anymore.
People are too busy being “transparent” and “authentic.”
That said, Google Ngram disagrees with me. (Ngram is a useful though flawed tool. It determines the frequency of a word, name or term’s usage in millions of books and articles.)
In any event, during my reading last night, I tripped over a nice, succinct definition of disinformation. It seemed precise and not loaded with its own politics. (I spend an hour a day with a genius. It not only helps my brain, it helps restore me after a day so elbow deep in contemporary reference-less dopeyness. And sports.)
When your agency has lost its biggest accounts, about 80-percent of its revenue, and first over the last five years about 80-percent of its people and your website features this, that’s disinformation.
BTW, In 2017, Ogilvy/WPP had 203,000 employees.
An action by a state or
non-state actor designed
to mask or reshape the
truth about an event.
Disinformation, of course, is everywhere.
It’s all that bullshit about you being powerful.
About companies that care.
About the investments they make to heal the planet.
It’s everything ever uttered by the cranial-merkin-wearing felon-in-chief and his persilschien willing-executioners. It’s every word you’ve heard about healthcare, taxes, elections and whatever number of wars we are or are not fighting.
But Disinformation has an equally pernicious döppleganger.
Dis-Information.
You might want to take a look at this to see what I mean. (It’s 2:06 long. And of course, you have no time.) It’s about the power of information—even if no one actually reads it.
As Sammy Glick asked in Budd Schulberg’s great novel “What Makes Sammy Run?” "Why tell the truth when you can lie?”
Why provide ballast when you can show generic pictures?
So 99.99% of advertising, of conversation, of intercourse is empty of meaning and promise. It’s lip service. Without the spurious pleasure of actual lips.
So we don’t create brands. We create un-meaning. Which destroys brands.
Then we pay for awards for it. And publicize the awards. All while creating more un-meaning.
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