Part 3 ~ The Loss of Trust and Celebration of Trivia

Not only is important information trivialised, but “more and more news is so exaggerated that it is simply wrong, misinformation”(Dutton, 2017).  As a result, as Professor Bill Dutton theorised, “no one will take political rhetoric or news media seriously”(Dutton, 2017).  We lose trust in anything that claims to inform us, even if that information is crucial to instigating actions against global catastrophes like climate change.  We become desensitised to “enlightenment concepts such as the ‘truth’” which “are overused and overemphasised to the point they are meaningless and cease to have the currency they once had”(Gilroy-Ware, 2017 p. 169).

Our distrust in ‘informative’ media turns us further towards trivial and fictional media as a method of escapism; although this media may be of little informational value, at least it is seemingly not trying to (mis)inform us.  “People have begun to seek out information less and less, instead preferring entertainment and other distractions as a vain attempt to bolster their emotional survival”(Gilroy-Ware, 2017 p.169).

As trivia is further reinforced in society, media becomes filled with “enormous amounts of totally dubious information about celebrities”(Loose Women, 2019), as Germaine Greer points out.  In this way, not only is information trivialised, but trivia is celebrated.