As Pique reported on the local snowboarding exploits of convicted Jan. 6 U.S. Capital rioter Antony Vo, more than one reader reached out to enlighten us about the “facts” of that infamous day.
It’s all a conspiracy, they argued—there was “limited violence,” and there were a small handful of federal agents in the crowd of thousands that swarmed the Capital in an attempt to prevent the certification of a free and fair election. Which, in the minds of some readers, is certifiable proof the whole thing is some sort of perverse false-flag; a Deep State, Democrat conspiracy, fuelled by Pique and our friends in “da media.”
What we all collectively witnessed that day—a violent and deadly attempted insurrection in the United States incited by the now-incoming president, complete with masks, a makeshift gallows for the vice president and zipties for elected representatives—did not happen the way it actually happened, they argue (baselessly).
“The truth is coming … please research.”
We’ll get right on that.
Clearly, this individual has done their own “research” into the matter, and found the whole thing to be smoke and mirrors. Whew!
Knowing what we know about the breadth of misinformation now infecting every online space, it’s easy to picture the kind of research they’re describing—the type that starts with a preferred conclusion, and works backwards from there.
It’s a trend that has been building since before Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, and long before the COVID pandemic in 2020, though both of those things exacerbated the issue—now reaching a disconcerting crescendo in early 2025, as Trump prepares to once again assume office seemingly hell-bent on tearing down every last agreed-upon norm.
Invade Greenland. Rename the Gulf of Mexico. Take control of the Panama Canal. Coerce Canada to become the 51st U.S. state through “economic force.” So much for Trump being the “anti-war” or “America First” candidate. What ever happened to making eggs and gas cheaper?
These are not sane, realistic or normal ideas, based in what we once considered a shared reality. Yet at the mere utterance of these thoughts, an endless parade of sycophants lines up to repeat them, cheer them on, will them into being—many of them coming from inside Canada itself.
Buckle up, folks—it doesn’t matter what we plebs want, or think, or think we want anymore.
From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, the billionaires are buying up the media, reshaping public discourse to suit their needs—objective truth and reality be damned.
In early November, U.S. non-profit the Center for Countering Digital Hate published a report stating false or misleading claims by Musk about the U.S. election amassed a whopping 2 billion views on X (formerly Twitter).
Spend five minutes on X with a critical, informed eye and you’ll begin to understand how deep the well of hateful bullshit flows (spoiler: it’s bottomless).
Sadly, many of us don’t seem to possess any sort of critical, informed reasoning skills here in 2025, so where does that leave us?
Reality, we hardly knew ye.
Mark Zuckerburg’s Meta is the latest to give up the good fight, firing its factcheckers and regressing its hate-speech policy, citing a shift in today’s culture.
Bigots, rejoice: you can now freely villainize immigrants and call LGBTQ people “mentally ill” on Facebook without fear of repercussion.
We see it on a local scale, too. Peruse the comment section of any post on any Whistler-related Facebook page, and you’re sure to spot some misinformation—particularly if you have a real-world understanding of the topic being discussed.
What happens when the guardrails come off in earnest, and bad info is given free rein to spread, corrupt, confuse? What happens when the entire incoming U.S. presidential administration has shown time and again it has zero regard for the objective truth—in fact, despises and demonizes it?
How will Artificial Intelligence and finely-tuned social media algorithms factor in to shaping our shared future?
At the risk of being labelled a doom-and-gloom pessimist, I’ll refrain from offering up any predictions at this point.
But in 2025 it’s more true than ever that the internet has gifted each of us our own, personal “choose-your-own” reality—a prospect too enticing for simpler minds to overcome.
How do we address it?
It starts with a renewed focus on media literacy (both social and traditional), starting young—but adults are often just as vulnerable as children.
Catherine Burwell, a University of Calgary (UofC) associate professor who specializes in media education and digital literacy, believes Canadian curriculums are in need of an upgrade.
“It’s more urgent than ever because today we are literally drowning in seas of information coming from so many different sources. With that, there’s also an overwhelming flood of mis- and disinformation. Making sense of this information overload has become a matter of paramount importance for students,” Burwell said in a Sept. 3, 2024 UofC blog post.
Not only are many parents not immune to misinformation, they’re sometimes instilling bad info in their kids, Burwell said.
“It’s true that some young people are entering the classroom believing misinformation learned at home. And it’s not the teacher’s role to simply say, ‘You’re wrong.’ What we can do is teach critical thinking and give students the space to participate in important conversations and the tools to think deeply,” she said.
“This can foster the ability to ask intelligent questions about the information we receive.”
Adding a class to the curriculum dedicated to media literacy would be “ideal,” she added, “but I don’t see school curriculums introducing this anytime soon. If we can’t have that, though, we need be to be thinking about how to incorporate these lessons deeply into the existing curriculum, across subject areas, and beginning in the early elementary grades, too.”
Even Pope Francis, the 88-year-old leader of the Catholic church, used his annual new year’s address to rail against misinformation.
“This phenomenon generates false images of reality, a climate of suspicion that foments hate, undermines people’s sense of security and compromises civil coexistence and the stability of entire nations,” Francis said at the Vatican on Jan. 8.
“In our time, the denial of self-evident truths seems to have gained the upper hand.”
Sad but true.
For now, the less time we spend doomscrolling, the better.
