This is not about fake news.

That’s a separate realm. It’s where truth dies when the size and effort of the lie is enough to give it credence.

This isn’t about relativism, though that’s very much alive. It’s thriving in Canada, where the governing party is tying itself in knots talking about my truth, his truth, and her truth.

This is also not about how the Internet is a publishing house without an editor (apologies to Dave Pell) — a delicious irony served cold every time someone gets raving mad about what the NY Times dared to print.

This might be about how, thirty years after its founding, we continue to fail the Internet. We have let it become a place where we talk and write but don’t listen or read. Where City Lab can ruin a worthwhile assessment of meaningful data with the headline “There’s No Such Thing as a Dangerous Neighborhood” and still miss this grim reality:

Over the last five years, 105 people have been killed within a mile of the [Dymally High School] campus, the highest number surrounding any public high school in the county. Ten of the victims were 18 or younger.

Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2019

The strands of the world wide web are frayed, and the connection is being being lost.