If misinformation were suddenly declared a virtue—something not just tolerated but actively praised, rewarded, and cultivated—the world would flip in fascinating and terrifying ways.
Societies would stop valuing truth as a shared foundation. Instead, the most virtuous people would be the ones who could spin the wildest, most convincing fictions without getting caught (or even while getting caught, if the story was entertaining enough). Politicians, marketers, and influencers would become saints. Fact-checkers would be heretics. Journalists would pivot to writing sacred parables rather than reports. History books would be rewritten every generation to reflect whichever lies make the current regime feel best.
Trust would evaporate overnight. Every conversation would carry an unspoken asterisk: “This might all be beautifully virtuous nonsense.” Relationships would run on mutual storytelling contests rather than honesty. “I love you” could mean anything from genuine affection to “I’m testing whether you’ll pretend to believe me.”
Science would collapse into competitive mythology. Research grants would go to whoever promises the most uplifting falsehoods. Climate change? Solved by the virtuous decree that it feels cooler this year. Medicine? Just tell patients the sugar pills are nanobots and call it a miracle.
On the positive side (if we can call it that), creativity would explode. Art, humor, and fiction would blur into everyday life. Irony would be mandatory. People might develop exquisite sensitivity to tone, context, and subtext because literal truth would be irrelevant. We’d evolve into a species of performance artists, forever improvising reality together.
Eventually, though, even the concept of “misinformation” would lose meaning. If lying is virtue, then truth-telling becomes the only real transgression. The most dangerous person in such a world wouldn’t be the liar, but the stubborn bore who keeps pointing out that the emperor’s new clothes don’t exist.
In short: a civilization built on celebrated misinformation wouldn’t just be post-truth; it would be post-reality. It might be dazzling, hilarious, and spiritually intoxicating for a while—right up until the planes fall out of the sky because the pilots virtuously believed the fuel gauges were lying, or until the food runs out because farmers planted chocolate coins instead of wheat.
So maybe truth isn’t such a dull virtue after all. It’s the only thing keeping the whole circus tent from catching fire while we juggle chainsaws inside it.