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"We interrupt this program to make an announcement from Jersey City. Jersey City has just fallen." This was the dire message broadcast to the world on the night before Halloween in 1938. The Martians had invaded earth.
It was really a line from the script of Orson Welles' radio version of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," and perhaps the first real fake news in media history. The broadcast, with its state-of-the-art sound effects and compelling voice actors, was so convincing that folks across the country fled from their homes in belief. People in cities ran to the hills. People in the hills ran to the towns. Sailors who were on leave from Naval ships were recalled to active duty. And, of course, everyone's imagination went wild as it seemed Armageddon had arrived.
Orson Welles was not acting maliciously when he spoofed the world with his clever radio play. He was just upping the ante in entertainment. In the aftermath, he apologized for some of the panic and inconveniences he had affected. Yet I think he had to be somewhat incredulous regarding the awesome power of mass media, and of the thin line separating art from reality.
Fake news today is a very different theater. We don't need clever sound effects or real actors to set the stage. All that is needed is the internet and enough tech savvy to generate deep-fake images of real people, followed by a storyline that penetrates the paranoid psyches of the masses. Of course, the perceived threat today is not some alien armada from outer space. It's already here among us, wearing the mask of a real person to hide the face of the artifice beneath.
As Halloween approaches this year, I have concerns about young people. Not the usual worries about little kids out on the streets at night. I worry about those teenagers whose personal identities are developing through interests influenced more by social media and less by the physical world around them. They have grown apart from traditional associations with ghouls, skeletons, cartoon characters and celebrities. They prefer more cryptic, psychologically damaged figures. Their sense of the macabre is culled and conjured through sophisticated internet channels. Adults are not welcome in these places.
Young people are not naive, and have recently witnessed unfettered greed, mendacity and narcissism at the highest level of government. The line separating adults from teens is more opaque than ever. There is a deepening trust issue, and doomscrolling has become more and more popular.
Doomscrollers are individuals who have become caught up in the pursuit of information and entertainment that speaks to a fatalistic mindset. It's different from the old Goth kids, who protested openly in their black outfits, thick make-up, chains and creepy hair-do's. Doomscrollers have internalized their interests. They have resigned themselves to the meaninglessness of life. Dreamless, hopeless, they mine the depths for signs of the apocalypse.
There is no easy solution to the growing disfranchisement of young people. Every kid is different in his or her way of dealing with the inevitable loss of innocence. The lucky ones with strong family ties will carry their inner child happily with them even as they progress through adulthood. Others will have difficulty overcoming the sense doom.
Absent moral leadership in politics, it is up to parents, teachers, coaches, and religious leaders to help the kids who have given themselves to the shadowy corridors of the internet. We need to show them a light in the real world, and to assure them (even if we don't fully believe it ourselves) that the War of the Worlds is not upon us.
Pete Howard is the author of Rosebud Dreamworld, a novel for young and not-so-young adults.