Once Upon a Truth…

In the beginning, there was Truth. No questions asked, carved into stone tablets and shouted from mountaintops by bearded men with suspiciously confident eyebrows. You knew where you stood. Reality was what the guy with the staff and the fire-belching bush said it was. These were the good old days, back when epistemology came with a dress code and a smiting clause.

But then came the Enlightenment, where everyone started asking dangerous questions. Is truth what we perceive, or is perception a liar with a drinking problem? Do we know what we know, or are we just cosplaying certainty until something better comes along? Cue the philosophers descending like pigeons on a dropped hot dog.

Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” which sounds smart until you realize it’s just an overthinker’s version of “I’m pretty sure I exist.” Kant chimed in with his whole “thing-in-itself” business, suggesting that we can never really know the world, but only our idea of it. Basically, Truth was already looking a bit unwell before the Internet came along and shoved it into oncoming traffic.

Truth Checked Out… Now We Just Have Vibes

Enter the 21st century, stage left, dragging its cracked iPhone and a half-eaten Xanax prescription out for another trip to Starbucks. Truth left the building a while ago. What we have now is her chaotic younger cousin, Narrative, who shows up uninvited to every dinner party, drinks all the wine, and insists that reality is “just a construct, babe.”

In the Age of Misinformation, truth is no longer needing to be discovered, because it’s marketed to us at every turn! Every opinion has a megaphone. Every conspiracy theory has a merch store. Your racist uncle from Topeka has the same digital reach as the New York Times, and frankly, he’s posting way more often.

We’ve created an epistemological carnival, where facts are contortionists, context is a disappearing act, and everyone’s wearing a mask. That is, except the guy claiming he’s “just asking questions,” which is code for “I googled something and now I’m an authority.” The problem isn’t just bold-faced lies. It’s the sheer velocity of nonsense. There’s no time to process one delusion before another shows up.

The philosopher Harry Frankfurt (yes, the one who literally wrote a book titled “On Bullshit”) warned us about the rise of “bullshit” which is distinct from lying. A liar knows the truth and hides it. A bullshitter doesn’t care if it’s true. They just want attention, reaction, and engagement. Sound familiar? That’s right, we’ve built our entire civilization on a foundation of hot takes and Reddit threads.

Webs We Weave, Then Conveniently Forget We’re Caught In…

So, my dear readers, what happens when the truth is no longer something you seek, but something you curate? We live in a bespoke reality economy. You don’t follow the truth, you follow accounts. You subscribe to worldviews like they’re streaming platforms. Some people binge climate science. Others mainline flat earth documentaries. Everyone thinks they’ve got the director’s cut of reality, and the rest of us are living in the blooper reel.

Oh, and because we are so modern, we’ve decided that feelings have tenure now. “I feel like that’s wrong” has replaced “I know that’s false.” Somewhere, Socrates is facepalming in the underworld. Truth has become democratic, but in the worst way, subject to likes, polls, and algorithmic manipulation by people who sell herbal supplements and dubious NFTs (yes, some poor blokes are still on that racket).

Of course, this has philosophical consequences. If truth is whatever gets shared the most, then epistemology is just PR with a toga. Trust in institutions has all but vaporized. Journalistic integrity is being hunted to extinction. Science, at least its popular face, is forced to wear clown shoes and explain itself to YouTube comment sections.

We’ve built echo chambers so well-insulated they should qualify for Energy Star ratings. In them, we shout our “truths” until the walls repeat them back. Never mind if they’re stitched together with duct tape, denial, and a vague sense of being wronged!

Seeking Truth at the Lost and Found

Now, the question we should be isn’t just what is truth; it’s whether it still wants anything to do with us. If Truth had a therapist, the notes would read: patient feels unseen, unheard, consistently misrepresented, possibly gaslit by humanity.

Let’s pretend, for one hot second, that Objective Truth does exist out there, floating somewhere between quantum entanglement and your ex’s ability to “not be the villain.” Even then, we have a problem: recognizing it requires shared frameworks—logic, language, and evidence. Well, we’ve already deconstructed like unwanted IKEA furniture, then used the shredded remains of the poorly conceived instruction manual to line a hamster cage.

The new priests of truth aren’t philosophers or scientists; they’re influencers, pundits, and people who call themselves “thought leaders” without irony. They don’t aim to uncover reality; they just want to win the narrative war. That’s the real currency now: not facts, but beliefs that sell and make a substantial profit.

Which brings us to the moral hangover: what do we do when everyone’s too busy defending their version of reality to ask whether it’s actually, you know, real?

At this point, Truth is less a noble ideal and more like your one friend who always gets stood up yet keeps showing up anyway. You know the one: hopeful, awkward, and wearing outdated shoes, yet still believing in us despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that they shouldn’t.

How to Live When Truth is Dead, or Perhaps Just Ghosting You

Alright, folks! We’ve identified the corpse, confirmed the time of death (somewhere between the rise of reality TV and the invention of the Facebook share button), and now it’s time to figure out how the hell we’re supposed to live in this shimmering funhouse of fractured facts and curated delusions.

First things first: resist the urge to go full nihilist. It’s so tempting, I know. Just throw your hands up, declare everything meaningless, and retreat into ironic detachment and niche memes. But honestly, lovelies, that’s just despair in skinny jeans. Truth may be elusive, but that doesn’t mean it’s extinct. It’s just got excellent at hide-and-seek, and frankly, we stopped trying around level two.

Second, get comfortable with uncertainty. Not the passive, shrug-and-scroll kind, but the gritty, honest work of not knowing yet still caring. You don’t need to have the whole map. Just start by asking better questions, especially the ones that make people squirm. “What evidence do I have for that?” is a great one. “Who benefits if I believe this?” is even better. It’s going to really scare some people, and I’m living for that.

Third, cultivate intellectual humility like it’s a rare orchid. You are going to be wrong sometimes, probably more often than not. You’re probably wrong about something right now. That’s not a weakness, though; hell, it’s a superpower in a world drunk on certainty. Admitting you don’t know makes you damn near radioactive in today’s climate of professional bloviators. Use it wisely.

Finally, build your own little quiet rebellion. Read widely and fact-check obsessively. Support institutions that still remember what Truth smells like, even if it’s faint. Have hard conversations. Defend nuance like it’s the last good thing we’ve got. Be the person who dares to say, “Wait, what’s really going on here?” even if it kills the vibe and makes you Public Enemy Number One at most polite parties.

Even if Truth is battered, bruised, and buried beneath ten layers of clickbait, it’s still the only thing standing between us and the abyss. It’s not your truth, and most certainly not my truth. The real Truth is something stubborn, quiet, and really lovely underneath it all, waiting for us to stop yelling and start listening.

~ Amelia Desertsong

Postscript: For the Unhinged, the Enlightened, and the Chronically Online

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations—you’ve successfully resisted the algorithmic urge to skim, scroll, or share a quote out of context like some intellectual raccoon rifling through a dumpster of half-digested ideas.

I and the team behind Chronicles of Absurdia salute you.

You, brave truth-seeker, have chosen to stay in the discomfort, to sit with paradox, to recognize that reality is neither a TED Talk nor a TikTok binge—it’s a messy, contradictory, often inconvenient thing that doesn’t care about your feelings, your filters, or your follower count.

Yes, the age of misinformation is exhausting. Indeed, we are all one “citation needed” away from a nervous breakdown. But no, you are not powerless. You have a brain. You have instincts. You have access to a library, a search engine, and the rarest resource of all: time spent thinking before reacting.

So, keep asking, keep doubting, keep poking the soft underbelly of assumptions with a sharp, well-researched stick. Don’t let the noise drown out the quiet voice that says, “But is that actually true?”

Because in the end, Truth isn’t a destination. It’s a habit. Yeah, that sounds exhausting, but so is exfoliating, yet we still do it. Otherwise, we’re just walking around with dead ideas clinging to us like flakes of epistemological dandruff.

Stay weird. Stay sharp. And remember: in a world built on illusions, clarity is rebellion.

With sarcastic love and epistemic shade,

The Chroniclers of Absurdia, Truthiness addicts in remission, and professional side-eyers of poorly constructed arguments.