This morning listening to Today Explained hosted by the amazing Sean Rameswaram I learned a new word! Not any word, but the Merriam-Webster word of year for 2022: gaslighting. This is a true indicator that I really don’t follow regular American news feeds as it appears that this word was reintroduced back in 2016 in a teen vogue article and has been gaining utilization year after year since, and this year was the most searched word on Merriam-Webster’s site.

So I say reintroduced because this word began its first circulation after the release the of the 1944 film Gaslight (which was based on a play from 1938) in which a man attempts to manipulate his wife into believing she is insane by leading her to doubt her own perceptions.

Merriam-Webster has two definitions for gaslighting:

1. psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator
   Gaslighting can be a very effective tool for the abuser to control an individual. It’s done slowly so the victim writes off the event as a one off or oddity and doesn’t realize they are being controlled and manipulated.
2. the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage

Interesting! And very much in line with the current state of mistrust and doubt of everything times we live in today in which Neal Stephenson nailed in his book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. In the book the lack of trust in the news and any information has passed the tipping point to where absolutely nobody trusts anything. While reading the book when it came out in 2019 I thought it very insightful of Neal and as always his books introduce something ahead of the times (for those who don’t know at this point, the new name for Facebook came from his cyberpunk novel Snowcrash written back in 1992). Unfortunately it appears that Neal’s insightfulness was more of a warning of the slippery slope we have begun going down and where it will lead. My personal opinion is this all can be traced back to obnoxious talk radio hosts, to then over the top tv hosts, to then a former president, each grossly misleading their audience for their own advantage. AKA gaslighting. At least now I have a word for what we are living through!

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).