There Are No Alternative Facts: Some Rules For Discerning Reality In This Hallucinogenic Hellscape of Misinformation

Note: cross-posted from my Substack, where it was under a paywall. If anyone asks directly for a cross-post I will always do so, so that folks on both sites feel like they're getting their money's worth, even though the Substack's content is considerably less cozy. Don't worry, the essay and other rewards are unaffected by these cross-posts, I'm just having surgery in an hour for the other carpal tunnel'd hand and it'll take me a few days to come round from that. See you on the flip side!

I am a professional science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer. It is what I live and breathe. It is what I love. For twenty years I have stretched my imagination to tell the most out-there stories I can to as many people as I can. To imagine the future and the past, new technologies and philosophies and how to function within them.

So when I tell you people are getting really fucking weird about the line between imagination and reality, you need to believe me. It’s not ChatGPT that might end up putting me out of work, it’s the way we’re apparently just allowing millions of people to announce their personal epic science fiction spec script is reality, act on that conviction, still be treated as serious people to be taken seriously, and given influence and power. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WE DO NOT HAVE WEATHER CONTROL OR MEDBEDS OR CLONES AND JAY-Z IS NOT A FREAKING WEREWOLF.

It’s this. This shit right here, liked by 377,000 people, not even close to all of whom thought it was a joke or a grift. Thought I admit, the “twice” is a hilarious touch.

Now, the way this Substack works is that each public post has a companion piece under the paywall containing all the things I wanted to say but didn’t want to deal with the usual horde of bad-faith concern trolling and screaming misinformation in the comments.

On top of that, this particular one is locked because I’m going to start off by telling a story about a family reunion I went to awhile back and the truly acid-addled-raccoon genre fiction presented to me, to my face in real life, by human beings I ostensibly share DNA with, as objective, common sense fact. To be completely honest, the last time I mentioned their worldview online, one of the relations in question popped up in the discussion and not only doubled down hard, but insisted on con-splaining how the sun works (spoiler: nope), not quite realizing that their version of Being Online and mine are very different. That person subsequently had no fun at all while fifty thousand people or so laughed at them and threw digital tomatoes.

I don’t totally know which I’m trying to avoid, that happening again and family members getting their feelings hurt/yelling at me, or my total fucking despair if it didn’t, because I can no longer be sure anyone on Twitter knows the difference between whatever they dreamed the last time they took Benadryl on an empty stomach and reality. God DAMMIT, Planet Earth.

But I’m going to unbury the lede and put the first rule for discerning What Is from What Is Fucking Squirrel Nuts above the fold. There’s a few other rules, but this one is just a simple and effective question to ask yourself when evaluating whether some stupid outlandish thing you heard is reality or JUST TOTAL GIBBON-SHRIEKING INTO AN INFINITE HALL OF NIGHTMARES. As a public service.

DON’T BE AFRAID, IT’S CRITICAL THINKING TIME. If the answer the following is yes…

• Would life be massively easier, more fun and interesting, or at least massively more dangerous/exciting and interesting, than you’ve ever known it to be for one single second of your lived experience if this thing were even half-true?

THEN IT’S PROBABLY VENOMOUS DREAMPUKE EJECTED FROM THE SUGAR PLUM FUCKING FAIRY’S MONEY-SUCKING BILE-CLOACA, YOU CANTELOPE, STOP BEING SUCH A GORMLESS SUCKER.

Okay! All set? Time to talk shit about what my second cousins believe!

Let’s hop in the definitely-real Democrat-controlled time machine fueled by baby blood and straight men’s tears. Reserve yours now for 47 non-refundable installments of just $47.47! Product launch date: MAYBE!

I suspected something was about to shake dangerously loose in the collective American psyche around the summer of 2016, at a reunion of my maternal family in upstate New York, about six weeks after my maternal grandfather had died, a fact which will be quite important in approximately 35 seconds, the precise amount of time it took between getting out of my car and someone I’d never met before just bellyflopping with gusto into a Smilex vat of bugfuck nonsense…

Yeah…summer of 2016. When Obama was still President, most people were pretty confident Hillary had this in the bag (including the Republican candidate himself), Pokemon Go was the greatest human achievement to date, and Trump was not only kind of a joke, but not yet the rotten tootsie-pop center of every conspiracy theory dribbled out by the malfunctioning Furby in a Faraday cage that controls our reality OR WHATEVER IT IS THIS WEEK JFC.

Halcyon fucking days, I tells ya. No COVID, no Qanon, antivaxxers were a quiet rumble, and anyone who told you JFK Jr was still alive would’ve been stared at in total bafflement until they admitted they’d gotten wicked high that morning and were going through a lot at home.

The point is, despite everything that’s happened since, a normal person on their way to a normal reunion of various family branches in upstate New York could reasonably expect little more than the usual low simmer of sub-Thanksgiving table craziness from the odd poorly-socialized uncle.

SO BUCKLE UP.

No sooner did I pass the welcome sign featuring my last name and allow one unfortunate toe to touch the concrete slab containing those ancient iron-age barbecue grilles provided by public parks, which obviously stood dark and cold because zero family reunions ever manage to start the coals before twilight in this vale of tears, but a short, fifty-ish woman bearing a vague resemblance to my mother appeared in front of me wearing none other than THE three-wolf moon shirt and a pentacle necklace, for reasons which will shortly be as baffling to you as they have been to me for nine years now.

This one, if you are too young or innocent to remember a time when we talked about something other than politics online. Oh YES, my friends. This actual shirt.

This woman, who, and I cannot stress this enough, did not introduce herself in any way, immediately yelled, red-faced:

“DO YOU KNOW WHY YOUR GRANDFATHER IS DEAD?”

I gotta say, there isn’t really anything that can follow that question, asked in that way, at that volume, that’s good and good for you. Like, you can solidly predict she’s not going to finish that thought with “STOMACH CANCER! I’M SO SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS, MY NAME IS MARY AND I’M YOUR GREAT-AUNT.”

And indeed, she did not.

At the same volume, facial shade, and level of passion, she informed me of the following. Every word of this sentence just gets exponentially worse and worse, so I want you to take it in slowly as we go on this journey together:

“YOUR GRANDFATHER IS DEAD BECAUSE BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS GOING AROUND ALL THE NURSING HOMES AND ASSASSINATING THE WORLD WAR II VETS BECAUSE HE WANTS TO BE A COMMUNIST DICTATOR AND THEY’RE THE ONLY ONES WHO REMEMBER WHAT FREEDOM IS.”

I’m sorry what the fuck

There’s just so much to unpack there the longshoremen’s union wants overtime. Where do you even start? Hey nice to meet you, I’m Cat? GOOD LUCK.

It was summer of 2016. I did not yet feel it was my duty to immediately and forcefully shut down, with cited sources and planned routes around malfunctioning logic circuits, anything like this level of Facebook-induced encephalitis. I chuckled awkwardly and started to talk, but every time you see an ellipsis in the following, please insert stream-of-consciousness free-form improv on the topic of What’s Really Going On and How I Don’t Understand What’s At Stake: “Yeah, you gotta give me a beer before you hit me with that kind of talk…also that’s not…real…or a thing…like, just for starters, Obama is pretty busy, he would…he would 100% delegate that…why would he kill Grandpa himself…we would have heard the President visited Grandpa Tony…ever…okay, hold up, do you even know what communism is? Do you know what you’re wearing around your neck…on any level?” I was not getting through, so I tried to subtly move toward the Alcohol Table without startling whoever this was. (My great-aunt Mary Kate…I think she’s my great-aunt, maybe. Might be second cousin? Honestly, we’re Italian, I know the Game of Thrones family trees better than mine because they are smaller and less complicated.)

Have you had this kind of interaction with a family member or friend? Of course you have. This is hell, and that’s part of the rent. And I would probably have shrugged it off and not Had a Bad Feeling About This(tm) if my [insert extremely close relative with whom I came], a professor emeritus of goddamned balloon-fucking political science who had been, all my life, both very liberal and very empirically-minded, was standing right behind me, neither surprised nor helping, and sailed right on as though nothing unusual had been said.

But sure, maybe she just knew there was no point and wanted to grab the good wine before me. Except about twenty minutes later, said close relative and Auntie Three Wolves started talking about ghosts and I started praying please God make me a bird so I can fly far, far far away because it was 1pm, I was dead sober, and reality is just this super fun place I like to live most of the time and they were RUINING IT.

You see, my golden retriever had also just died, and upon hearing this fresh depressing news, these two very Catholic people, one liberal, one conservative (despite the pentacle, which I still can’t fit into this mess), proceeded to go on at length about how I could (and believe me, I don’t even want to type this) raise the spirit of my dog from the dead and talk to her so she could always be with me and I would never be alone like they have both done to great success.

Inside scream: YOUR OWN RELIGION SAYS DOGS DON’T HAVE SOULS TO BEGIN WITH AND THAT’S BEFORE WE GET INTO THE FACT THAT YOU’RE CASUALLY RECOMMENDING FUCKING NECROMANCY TO ME ON THE LORD’S DAY! THAT’S SO MANY SINS! IS THAT WHY THE PENTACLE? WHY AM I THE ONE STILL IN TROUBLE FOR NOT BEING CATHOLIC?...

I DON’T KNOW, AUNT MOONHOWLER, YOU SURE OBAMA DIDN’T SNEAK INTO MY HOUSE AND KILL MY DOG, TOO?

And that’s how I knew strange things were afoot at the Circle K. That there definitely were three wolves inside my great-aunt, and none of them were okay. I didn’t know how many wolves were inside my other relative, but I GUESS AT LEAST ONE OF THEM WAS A LICH?

Both of these people were perfectly normal otherwise. We all have flaws (raising dogs from the dead notwithstanding), but they were and are educated, employed, even prosperous people with marriages and children and an active engagement with their communities. They were not isolated weirdos living off the grid and double-fisting raw milk in a tinfoil diadem. But this DEEPLY BIZARRE and NOT REAL dark necromancer shit just rolled right off their tongues like we were sitting around chatting about rose varieties or something.

The Boomers were not okay. (A short digression: sometimes I think people with life experiences more in line with these two relatives of mine rather than my own has to do with them never really having played video games. So much of Qanon and its fell offspring is just a text adventure in which dopamine hits come from generating new lore/opening up new areas to explore. If your particular variation on the group project catches on, it feels like victory, like hitting the top of the leaderboards, leveling up. It brings intense attention and praise from strangers, which many stay-at-home parents and retirees have never gotten in their lives. People who never experienced how addicting those kinds of games, role-playing, and adulation can be have no real defense against finally feeling powerful, victorious, and seen just by playing along with something they may have started off thinking was a joke.)

It only got worse, as we all know. And when Trump got himself elected, the fact that a guy who believed all that nasty chaosmadness was in charge of the country meant all bets were off. But it got worse so fast. Auntie Three Wolves was the very one who popped up on Twitter six months later to reply to a thread I’d written about climate change, and every time I tell someone what she said about it, another part of me dies inside, so let’s all raise a glass to a shard of my fucking soul.

Take it one word at a time. It’ll hurt less.

“Cat, you don’t have to worry about climate change. It’s not real. And even if it were, it would only be because there’s a black hole on the other side of the sun, and the winds in space suck the heat from the sun toward the Earth.”

The winds in what now? Say it again slowly and think real hard.

The following is sadly very true: she was so fucking confident and casual about it that I found myself Googling is there a black hole on the other side of the sun? even though I FUCKING KNOW THERE ISN’T BECAUSE THERE IS NO “OTHER SIDE” OF THE SUN, MADAM COPERNICUS, WE’RE MOVING AT SPEED OUT HERE, ALSO NO WIND IN SPACE, ALSO WOULDN’T THAT STILL BE CLIMATE CHANGE TO WORRY ABOUT HOW DOES THAT HELP, ALSO THERE OBVIOUSLY ISN’T BECAUSE THAT’S TOO FUCKING CLOSE AND WE HAVEN’T ALL BEEN SLAMDUNKED PAST THE EVENT HORIZON INTO A SHRIEKING SINGULARITY AND PANCAKED TOGETHER INTO A TINY IMPOSSIBLY DENSE KATAMARI OF EVERYTHING WE’VE EVER KNOWN BUT I REALLY WISH WE HAD BECAUSE THEN I WOULD NOT HAVE TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION.

But see, there it is. I Googled it, even if it was blindingly stupid. I questioned myself, and her, because she’s out to infinite lunch and I’m not always right about everything. Unfortunately, the bubbling algorithms of the internet have gotten so good at guiding us only to ideas we’ve shown interest in already, so I’m not even sure how much Googling BASIC KINDERGARTEN FACTS would help.

I get taken in too, sometimes. I’m still not sure if those people actually think Jay-Z is a werewolf. But it doesn’t even seem that far out of the zeitgeist that they do, at this point. Life has become an unending issue of Fortean Times, and no one is willing to break the fourth wall and admit to fiction anymore. Things like Twitter and other social media flatten every post into seeming equally authoritative. Same font, same layout, same formatting, whether the content is about an official tornado watch or “Tornadoes are caused by drag queens spinning really fast, confirms This Guy (Who Will Be a Congressman In Three Years).”

It is hard to tell the difference if the weird content appeals to your worldview. You have to pay attention to the user posting it, the source cited (lol), where, when, and in what context it’s being disseminated, and even then, we do live in a vaguely science fictional future where things from books and movies (AI, driverless cars, Mars missions) are part of life and being actively debated. Add to that the fact that many, many movers and shakers like Musk are deliberately trying to erase the idea of reality in order to substitute it with their own, or at least a fever dream none of us can escape from SOUNDS REAL FUN GUYS.

And now the President of the United States has to go on TV to tell people that Democrats do not control the weather.

The President doesn’t know how to explain to people already convinced otherwise by the same sites that bring them photos of their families and birthday reminders that we are so far from that kind of technology we might as well blame Hurricane Milton on Storm from the X-Men, because it’s the same level of plausibility. I don’t stand a chance of standing in the way of millions determined to bolt back to the 19th century on just about every level and just hide, hissing with hate and fear and anger, in their personal role-playing game forever.

But I do think there’s some simple ways to figure out if the thing you’re reading in the same feed, looking and feeling and sounding the same as actual real news, is BATCRAP LOVECRAFTIAN UNSEELIE GIBBERING MADNESS. Not for a second did I entertain the idea that Obama assassinated my grandfather or that by following a few simple spells steps I could resurrect my dog’s spirit from the grave. Because that first rule up top is almost infallible in terms of sorting your brain out:

• Would life be massively easier, more fun and interesting, or at least massively more dangerous/exciting and interesting, than you’ve ever known it to be for one single second of your lived experience if this thing were even half-true?

Because…yeah, life would be a lot more interesting if any random retired mother of four could conquer death, drag the spirits of her loved ones out of their eternal rest, and bind them to her forever in the comfort of her own living room.

It would be a lot nicer if we knew factually that souls and spirits existed, that they go somewhere when we die, that return is possible. Humanity has longed to know that since we first thought it might be cool to shit outside the cave. It would be terrifying, but certainly fascinating, if a sitting President personally went around murdering the veterans of WWII and that somehow created both communism and a dictatorship. I mean, not remotely fun or okay, but that’s a hell of a story.

If you don’t already know about it, I don’t even know how to explain to you that a huge portion of the conspiracy-minded internet believes in “medbeds,” magical chambers that can heal any ailment, reverse aging, style your hair (not a joke), and regrow limbs. The images used to sell this non-existent product are almost universally either from the film Elysium, or more upsettingly, the Weyland-Yutani medpod from Alien: Prometheus.

This is a real “medbed” ad from an alleged MBA’s LinkedIn page…and that is the abortion-providing medpod from Prometheus.

You want to laugh, but it’s not funny. It’s fucking heartbreaking. We are so sick, in a nation with so few healthcare options, that these people have been living for years waiting for these “just about to come to market” or “wrested from the private use of the elites” to fix them and their loved ones. They can’t admit they were duped by truly evil grifters, because that would mean giving up hope.

Real life just isn’t very interesting most of the time. It can be downright boring. Big parts of it aren’t very rewarding. It’s hard and confusing and stupid and we spend much of our precious time on this planet repressing the urge to scream while those around us feel no such obligation. Living in an epic saga where you and your friends are heroes, magicians, valorous knights, keepers of a secret knowledge? Where you matter the most out of anyone, and everything you do is extraordinary, powerful, part of a grander plan? Christ that’s so much more fun.

And that’s how we got religion, kids

But we all know what we see day to day and it isn’t people walking down Main Street with a ghost on a leash, one pocket full of ghost snack and the other full of diaphanous bags for ghostpoop pickup. It’s just not. How fucking cool would it be if drag queens could create tornadoes with their sick dance moves? Hell, I want to go to that timeline! But…drag queens would literally be ruling us all with a sequined fist if that was real, because that’s power beyond reckoning. (I’m still down, to be honest.)

If anyone on Earth had the power to control the weather, everything would be different than we know it to be. You cannot hide that kind of technology. Too many people would’ve had to have worked on it, too many people would have to keep their dumb mouths shut, and frankly, if it were weaponized the way actual elected officials are moaning about, there’d be permanent thundersnow over Mar-a-Lago, or hurricanes hitting Moscow every week, or other impossible formations that would be far more geopolitically useful than kicking Florida in the taint again with the same kinds of storms it gets every year. Come on, give it a little pizazz if you’re going to lie like this!

But it’s that combination of wild imagination and total lack of imagination that really marks out the bullshit.

Here’s some more questions to ask yourself, or, more likely given the readership here, ask your friends and family who rock up announcing the tornado/drag queen connection as actual fact.

Would You Like To Stay With Us Here In Reality?

If the answer to any of the of the following is yes, question the information presented to you:

• Would life be massively easier, more fun and interesting, or at least massively more dangerous/exciting and interesting, than you’ve ever known it to be for one single second of your lived experience if this thing were even half-true?

• Have you ever seen a movie or read a book in which this thing happened? Was that movie or book explicitly fantastical? Have you or anyone you’ve met in person experienced this thing directly in real life? More than once? 

• Does the person telling you this suspicious thing have a job other than disseminating/selling suspicious things with a straight face?

• Science doesn’t happen in a vacuum and neither does capitalism: if you Google this thing, do you find any peer reviewed research on it, early prototypes in active testing, or established companies preparing to bring it to market, or at least moving their stock portfolios to take advantage of it? Has anyone who doesn’t have a podcast behaved as though this thing exists?

• At any point, does the announcement of this weird thing either tell you not to listen to other sources, or attempt to extract money from you for any reason other than making a straight-forward purchase of the tech itself from a vendor you’ve successfully used in the past that doesn’t feature “patriotic” words in their name?

• Does the person assuring you this is real push you to change your behavior/attitude toward yourself or others in anticipation of, but without guarantee of ever receiving, said thing, including the way you vote, dress, or socialize? Are the encouraged changes connected in any actual way to the technology or claims thereof?

That’s it, really. Nothing as utterly paradigm-altering as what conspiracy theorist constantly announce is announced by maladjusts on Twitter with MAGA in their username. If ghosts were verifiably real, if Democrats controlled the weather, if a bed existed to cure all disease, if there was a black hole in our solar system, the entire world would be talking about it and know it (except the black hole). Things would change fundamentally. The fabric of society could not stay the same. That is part of what we as science fiction writers do, imagine those changes—and our imaginations fail to capture the scope of such changes all the time. Yet the days go by, the seasons change, pets and grandparents continue to die, storms come and go, and progress continues to take time. Reality is not a thing we can just agree to disagree on.

There are three wolves inside you. (And possibly a moon.) Make sure at least one of them is a fucking skeptic.