The Truth Needs To Get Dressed Faster
Those who want to stop misinformation and spread facts online must communicate better to reach the masses
There’s an old adage, “A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its pants on.” It reminds me of countless mornings when I rushed through the house to wake my kids for school, cook grits and eggs, get dressed for work with minutes to spare―only to find one of my kids sitting on the floor, pants halfway on, reading a “Dog Man” book.
The truth doesn’t rush itself.
But the saying also makes me think about the conundrum of anyone who cares about discourse based on facts. Lies always have seemed to move faster than the truth, but never as fast as today. Social media, 24/7 cable news and now artificial intelligence-generated fake articles and videos have made it easier than ever to spread untruth. A bot can write a hundred rebuttals to this essay faster than you can read it once.
It’s tempting to solve this problem with censorship, but that solution creates new problems of its own, including a backlash against any attempt to slow down or correct misinformation. A better approach might be to help truth “get dressed faster,” so to speak. Working in newspapers and university communications for about 20 years, I’ve noticed that people who are committed to fact-based reporting, the scientific method and robust scholarship usually convey their ideas in a way that falls flat in fast-moving online circles. The good news is that there are a few definite things we can do to communicate more effectively.
A Tall Tale With Teeth
As just one recent example, consider the debate earlier this year over whether millions of dead people receive Social Security checks. The topic went viral after an X post from Elon Musk. “According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!,” he wrote, attaching a screenshot of a table tallying more than 12 million people over the age of 120. “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
Almost immediately, people poked holes in Musk’s claim. Jared Walczak of the Tax Foundation debunked it by explaining that if all these centenarians were really collecting Social Security checks, the program would cost $1 trillion more than it actually does. Before long, the new chief of the Social Security Administration clarified that Musk’s data counted Social Security numbers, not beneficiaries.
Sorry, Dracula, no check for you.
But these fact-checks failed to drive a stake through Musk’s half-truth. As I write this, Musk’s original post about Social Security rolls has been viewed more than 97 million times. Meanwhile, Walczak’s post that corrected Musk has a mere 112,300 views. Musk got his message to 900 people for every one person who read Walczak’s words.
As one Substack writer put it, “The multiple attempts by sensible people to reason this out sanely get a lot less traction than the outrage tweets felt by those who are drunk on the sweet, sweet dopamine of self-righteous fury.”
Autopsy of the Truth
But if we despair over Musk’s post spreading faster than its corrections, we might overlook why this happens and how we can share facts more effectively. I don’t make this comparison to criticize Walczak. Instead, I want to demonstrate how intellectuals communicate quite differently from online influencers.
First, consider that Elon Musk is a well-known billionaire with more than 200 million followers on X, a platform he owns. Walczak, on the other hand, is a policy wonk with about 5,000 followers. Even if no one is “drunk on the sweet, sweet dopamine of self-righteous fury,” their follower counts guarantee Musk’s content will speed ahead.
Second, Musk included an image, even though it’s just a screenshot of a data table. Research shows that attaching an image of any kind captures more attention in the social media feed than posts without an image. Without a picture, Walczak’s message got overlooked more easily.
Third, consider the writing of these X posts. Musk wrote 37 words plus a few emoji. Walczak wrote 256 words across four paragraphs. His post contains 19 numbers and describes a mathematical calculation. Reading and interpreting his message requires thought, consideration and time. Next vampire meme, please.
Other people who tried to correct Musk took approaches similar to Walczak’s. Some ridiculed Musk for apparently not understanding how dates are formatted by the COBOL programming language, which the Social Security Administration uses to manage its database. Some referenced Y2K fears about computers glitching out in the year 2000. Others wrote about the challenges of managing gigantic databases.
All these messages sound like what you’d hear in a college classroom discussion—robust debate about various explanations for a phenomenon, ideally followed by seeking evidence to see which explanation might be correct. But to readers who are speeding through an infinite news feed, who don’t conduct mathematical analyses routinely, who have never heard of COBOL, these explanations can sound elitist. They say, “Trust me; I know something you don’t.”
What’s more, these detailed rebuttals were unnecessary. I Googled “number of Social Security recipients by age,” and the top result was this Social Security Administration chart showing that only 59.6 million people 62 and over receive Social Security checks—less than half the number Musk implied. The truth was easily close by, but most people who contradicted Musk reached for more complicated explanations that failed to catch people’s attention and may even have alienated some.
Making Truth Move Faster
Based on this analysis, there are several things that policy wonks, reporters, academics and others can do to make truth more salient online.
First, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, we must “tell all the truth but tell it fast.” Digital media is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, it demands brevity due to increased competition for limited attention spans. On the other hand, it promotes longwindedness by removing the physical barriers of pages and typewriters. One group of scholars noted that academic articles became at least 50% longer once journals shifted online: “Submitted manuscripts get ever longer, ever more turgid and, regrettably, ever less enjoyable to read.”
It’s fine to be able to write 10,000 words or more on a subject—indeed, it’s often necessary. But when engaging with mass audiences online, we must narrow our focus. You have a few seconds and a few words to catch your audience’s attention. Can you convey the most important part in 40 words?
Second, we need to communicate facts simply. In a college classroom, an academic conference or a newsroom, we reward people who show mastery of complex ideas and obscure knowledge. But reveling in difficult-to-grasp ideas can alienate those who lack the same level of interest or background information. In fact, something as simple as using scientific jargon can put readers on guard, making them less likely to accept the facts.
I’m not talking about “dumbing down” scholarship, because the audience isn’t dumb — they’re just not experts. I think of this approach more as translating: sharing a complex idea with words and analogies that the audience understands and cares about.
Third, we should observe the long-standing advice, “Show, don’t tell.” Social media is a visual medium where a picture or video not only captures attention, but helps to convey the message.
For those responding to Musk’s Social Security messages, the simplest and possibly best rebuttal would have been to post a screenshot of the chart showing the actual numbers of people getting checks. For Walczak or someone else wanting to talk about the math, a picture of the equation written out on a whiteboard would work better than describing the math over several paragraphs.
Then there are more humorous approaches, such as creating a meme showing Bella Swan from “Twilight” breaking up with Edward Cullen now that she knows this much-older vampire doesn’t get a monthly check from the government after all.
These ideas―embracing brevity, simplicity and visual communication―are fairly straightforward. But one other key is harder to swallow and harder to do.
Going viral online involves mastering psychological factors of social media. Viral content entertains us and affirms our identity and group membership. People like and share content that tells them how right they are. Negativity, arguments that cast blame for a problem, and exposing threats to the audience’s core values increase views on social media. One colleague who tried online influencing for a while told me that for some topics, going big requires selling out.
Rational, fact-based discourse―the kind we aspire to in academia and journalism―is quite different. It hits pause on emotional responses and analyzes data. It is cautious about assigning blame until after examining the complexity of a situation. It pushes back against irrational fears and tells you the system might not be perfect, but chances are there aren’t tens of millions of vampires sucking the government coffers dry.
I’m not asking scholars and journalists to abandon rational discourse or turn every headline into clickbait that confirms an audience’s bias. But purveyors of truth need to connect with people more online, sharing the same memes and jokes, showing solidarity, acknowledging the questions and concerns of others they disagree with. That’s what gives them the larger audience and trust for when their expertise is needed.
Can the Truth Get Dressed Faster?
As my kids became tweens, they became better at getting dressed quickly. Even my child who is most reluctant about school can get dressed in about 60 seconds if it’s a field trip day. Likewise, I’ve seen enough scholars reach a broad audience with their work that I think there is hope. A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its pants on. But if more of us who care about fact-based discourse communicate better―with brevity, simplicity, visuals and authentic connections with the audience―we can give truth a fighting chance to catch up.
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