Authenticity in the Age of the Fake
nautil.us
nautil.us
In May 1945, Van Meegeren was arrested, charged with collaborating with the enemy and imprisoned. His name had been traced to the sale made during WW II of what was then believed to be an authentic painting Vermeer to Nazi Field-Marshal Hermann Goering. Shortly after, to general disbelief, Van Meegeren came up with a very original defense against the accusation of collaboration, then punishable by death. He claimed that the painting, The Woman Taken in Adultery, was not a Vermeer but rather a forgery by his own hand. Moreover, since he had traded the false Vermeer for 200 original Dutch paintings seized by Goering in the beginning of he war, Van Meegeren believed that he was a national hero rather than a Nazi collaborator. He also claimed to have painted five other "Vermeers" as well as two "Pieter de Hoochs" all of which had surfaced on the art market since 1937.
A similar thing happened to lobster. It used to be considered poor people's food because of how abundant it was. Prisoners used to eat it.
A good source for this is: https://psmag.com/how-lobster-got-fancy-dab39dcf688a
In a world in which any good may be synthesised or fabricated cheaply, it is expense itself which is distinctive. "Story" or "provenance" cannot be fabricated, and so, despite the fact that it's irrelevant to the functional characteristics of a product or good, the immaterial becomes material and significant.
Closely related: Trevor Noah's observation on language:
Language and accents govern so much of how people think about other people. It's been happening since the beginning of time. Even now in America, you know when people say they "hate immigrants," they're not referring to a Canadian immigrant, they're not referring to somebody who has an accent [that] is slightly different to theirs — it's often that voice that throws you off. ... When you hear somebody speaking in an accent, it's almost like they're invading your language while they're speaking to you. Because if you hear someone speak another language, you almost don't care, but when they speak your language with an accent it feels like an invasion of something that belongs to you. ...
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/22/503009220/trevor-noah-looks-ba...
Language, as with manners, etiquette, and deep cultural familiarity, is an expensive and deep signifier of class and status.
The article is talking about items only previously obtainable via harvesting naturally occurring items, for example, diamonds. Then suddenly because some smart people worked on it for a bit, we had lab made diamonds. Or how purple dye used to be a challenge.
Despite the prevalence and usefulness of artifical otions for many formerly naturally occurring items, there are still huge pushes and even social stigmas for not having "authentic" versions of these materials.
I understand how you're making the comparison here, but you're conflating the topics. This isn't about verifying authenticity in the case of the materials, it's whether or not a diamond made in the ground is intrinsically worth more than one made in a lab, and why so many people feel better about the one from out of the ground.
There seems to be some nexus between claims of originality/authenticity and DRM.
Synthetic diamonds are not fake or unnatural. The distinction is between 'mined' vs 'made'
> I think those impurities give "character" to natural diamonds and make em more valuable.
I think they make mined diamonds more impure. And I think mined diamond companies use them to exploit men through artificial scarcity.
Purity of man made stuff is why it sucks, pure iron will rust the fuck away, u need add carbon and some metals to make good steel, same pure diamonds dont break light passing trough in such beautiful way as natural diamonds, and those impurities so far were not recreated by man.
Diamonds are about status projecting/social proof.
Manufactured ones would continue to be considered sub par because "reasons".
Even the article misses this. Literally the only reason people buy diamonds for is because they want to show that they burnt a large sum on it. If you buy fake diamonds, other people shame you because "I didn't burn the sum so you could reap the same social benefits without actually wasting your money", so fake diamonds have a stigma attached to it.
I wouldn't say that is their only reason. They are also very eye-catching and can be used to accentuate certain features. Their hardness makes their luster and shine outlast other jewelry too.
That isn't to say that diamonds are worth their price, just that the do serve a purpose from a fashion standpoint besides for signaling wealth.
Moissanite generally works better as a diamond stone than actual diamond for 1/10 the price.
Yes, but the reason used to justify it must be indirect, otherwise it's just crass behavior.
It can be impurities, it can be color (blue vs yellow), anything related to the extraction process, but never as simple as directly stating "it's more expensive".
How about a third party that certifies the facts and guarantees that the opinion in which they are expressed by is not slanted past a certain degree. Perhaps give a slant rating. Also, These third party could give a balance rating to a company on a certain issue or candidate. Out of X number of news stories, how many (positive and negative stories) did a given outlet run on each side? The third party could have internal peer reviews and other checks and balances (who watches the watchers?)
Can you imagine what these numbers would look like this election season? One last thing. How about each story has the author name at the bottom, but the link to their profile includes their voting record and party affiliation.
Now that would be transparency.
How about a startup for a news aggregation that somehow did this in an open and transparent way. They would disclose the reasons for all their decisions to keep things honest. Finally a one stop shop to get a balance of stories and opinions, both sides of the story, the actual truth about what is going on. There are so many misinformed people today.
Party affiliation could be faked in some way, but isn't an absolute thing any way. I could easily see ~alt-right~ fascist journalists donating $1 to many different left-wing parties to get a record of affiliation, and then undoing those donations by writing opinionated articles against those parties.
I haven't heard of any case in which anyone claiming affiliation with the "alt-right" has used any of this information in order to attack anyone. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said on all sides; Brendan Eich's politically motivated ouster from Mozilla, for example, tends to crop up fairly regularly in discussions of such matters, as a good example of the sort of behavior considered entirely apropos and indeed quite virtuous among progressive biens-pensants.
I wouldn't label them as right wing ('biens-pensants'), but as post-left[0]
If I read you correctly, you're describing the alt-right as post-left anarchists. I think many who favor the label might quibble somewhat with that analysis. At the very least, I'd be interested to see some elaboration on it.
After some more research, I was incorrect with the label 'post-left', however you were extremely incorrect about the label 'a̶l̶t̶-̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ fascist-right'.
The push to get Brendan Eich out of Mozilla was not done by people who use the a̶l̶t̶-̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ fascist-right label, but rather by people in the LGBT sub-community of left-wing (At least, as I understand it that was their overlap). i.e. people who think that it was inappropriate for him to fund anti-progressive legislation with money acquired from the open source movement.
It is not that I feel strongly about it, it is that the 'alternative right' ideology is close enough to various fascist ideologies to make the difference almost none. The effort to get them known as 'alt-right' is political effort to try and legitimise their various causes.
I think that the philosophies are so old, and have been fought again, and again, and again by people who persue freedom[0] enough to make the whole argument ridiculously obsolete.
I was taking you to mean 'right-wing' by 'bien-pensant', because I was not aware of the nuance in meaning.
[0]: Yes, I am aware of the various disparities in meaning of the word 'freedom'. In this sense I mean that isolating the rights of people based on various characteristics of them (Say, their religion, sexuality, etc.) is very, very wrong -- and the people who support this are against the very tenets of personal freedom.
Why? Anyone who cares enough to verify that will quickly see through it.
For one, it's pretty obvious for a moderately discerning reader to identify talking points that come from a party and campaign. Second, most political activity is public record and you can get registration and contribution records for anyone. Dig a little deeper and you can figure out who the persons family does and where they work.
The fake news phenomena has nothing to do with all of that -- it's just pure propaganda. It's easy to identify, but 80% of the population isn't highly engaged (many people don't realize that clearly identified "sponsored posts" are paid content!) and has no idea... they are looking for infotainment.