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Our perceptions are made up of the short, concise dumps of information we consume, but issues are so much more complex than that, aren’t they? The truth is so much more and the explanations can be much more complicated.

Sifting through the information to find genuine, unbiased stories is challenging and time consuming. It’s so much easier just to read the stories that confirm what we want to hear and believe; the headlines that prove our favourite party or politician is the “better one.” And we’re not robots, we’re human beings with lived experiences, families with political biases and positions we hold tightly to. Figuring us out is a science now. We’re an algorithm.

Political parties create those microbits of data, just for us, just like advertisers have. Your perception is paramount to them, it’s how they gain power. This isn’t new but the mediums and the speed of delivery is. And that has made us lazy in our quest for truth.

When I listen to conversations happening around me, it’s obvious to me that we not only consume in small spurts of information (like the length of a Tweet) but we also speak to others in that format. We take bits of information we’ve heard that morning or seen online, then converse with friends or colleagues this way, often already forming an opinion about that short spurt of data.

But maybe society has evolved to the point where we don’t really want to know the truth? Maybe the leaders we really put stock in are the ones that say they are “for the people” and portray themselves as wanting the same things as the rest of us. And that we can believe that they’re looking out for our best interest, therefore, we don’t need to check their stats or substantiate their claims.