Being informed means submitting to collective judgment while claiming exclusive knowledge

Evidence

To be informed about something implies an enforced solidarity with what has already been judged. We agree with the majority about it, yet simultaneously we wish to deprive them of it and take possession of it ourselves. With the gesture for which one is always prepared and which exercises a dictatorial power from the joke to the social research project, namely that of ‘But we know that already’, one doesn’t merely ingratiate oneself with the system personally, one also simultaneously disparages anyone who tries to persuade us of inconvenient facts which are devalued instantly since we know them ourselves already. Curiosity is the enemy of the new which is not permitted to exist anyway. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 126

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘But we know that already’ gesture maps directly onto contemporary dismissal of inconvenient facts — a live test case for running Adorno on post-death culture, e.g. climate skepticism or vaccine misinformation.