With the launch of Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation (FBMisin), Stoneslide Media announces a call for proposals to deliver more useful misinformation to America’s voters. Read the latest updates and submit your own ideas.
In a presidential election year in the United States, more than 120 million people will consider campaign proposals, scrutinize ideologies and political philosophies, and even sit through thirty second ads during Monday Night Football before casting their votes. In order to make informed decisions, voters need to understand the competing candidates and their platforms. Sadly, misinformation is the new norm in the current state of ruthless partisan competition, breeding frustration and cynicism in the body politic.
Both parties produce and air ads that are labeled “false,” “deceiving,” and “pants on fire.” That’s not to mention the contributions of shadowy and unaccountable Super PACS, corporations, and unions. How is a voter supposed to find truth amid the storm of competing claims? Can objective reporting and painstaking research help? Consider that four years after the 2008 campaign, 25% of voters believe President Obama was not born in the US, despite the clear evidence of his birth certificate and contemporaneous reports—in other words, what we used to call empirical evidence.
Empiricism has failed. We can no longer let misinformation be fought with the floppy impotence of “truth.” To bring the American people back to the electoral process, we must seize the stout sword offered to us—misinformation itself—and craft narratives that will make people care about elections again. This is the founding mission of Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation. And who better to do it than writers of fiction?
We invite all writers, editors, and readers to join us in our endeavor. This announcement serves as a call for proposals. How can misinformation be used to produce a better election? Send us your proposals.
FBMisin has already launched two pilot programs.
BETTER MISINFORMATION PROPOSAL #1
The Problem: Scandal detracts from optimal consideration of policy.
A candidate whose policy preferences match his or her constituents’ can nonetheless lose an election because of private indiscretions. People focus too much on these salacious stories and end up feeling the political system doesn’t serve their needs.
The Proposal: FBMisin will hire a team of actors, actresses, special effects artists, Foley technicians, gaffers, and writers to produce sexually explicit videos incriminating all 535 members of Congress and their opponents, so that each and every one will have a scandal hanging over them. This will give equal taint to all of them, and thus prevent scandal from tainting voters’ judgment.
BETTER MISINFORMATION PROPOSAL #2
The Problem: Voters lose interest in policy speeches, debates, white papers, and other such “dry” materials before they fully understand what’s at stake in the election.
The Proposal: Increase voter attention and engagement by having beautiful naked people reenact stump speeches and debates. It’s obvious that this approach will initially get far more attention than men in stiff suits at a lectern. We’ll create a Naked C-SPAN to be sure the programming is available whenever anyone needs a little look-see. But that is only the beginning of this misinformation proposal. Read about how America can be united by the combination of nudity and an unlikely love story.
Do you have your own idea for how better misinformation could improve our election? Use our handy proposal submission form, and we will highlight the best ideas. We welcome proposals for books, movies, propaganda campaigns, reality TV shows. The only format that is not acceptable is a poster presentation given at an academic conference.
Sylvester Stonesman, one of the founders of FBMisin, commented: “We are the Robin Hoods of the information wars, and we invite you to join us on our merry escapades. We take misinformation from the rich and we give it to the poor. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. It’s the other guys who use misinformation to ‘give it to the poor,’ if you know what I mean. They really give it to them, I mean, damn. Boy do the poor get screwed over and over and over. We, on the other hand, give them the power of misinformation—like Prometheus, that’s it, Prometheus not Robin Hood—because we know what’s best and what’s right.”
