Authority

Authority is often debated in the academia of English as it relates to an author's credibility and allowance to speak on a particular subject. However, according to Troemel, art as it exists on social media loses authorship - but does it lose authority? For example the following image once popularly circulated the internet, captioned as a standard of "Perfect Woman in the 1950s," often accompanied by a tag line to the tune of "Let's get back to THIS!" [1] However, the source of this image later came to light as a modern (2011) pornstar posing for a retro-inspired photoshoot. Artists online, fearful of losing credit for their work, often watermark their posts or tag them with directions to their followers to provide source-credit when reposting elsewhere. A commonly loathed frame is "Credit to the original artist!" which fails to actually give credit to the unknown artist. The concern raised by these observations of questionable authority over a work of internet-based art is that no one really knows who has authority. Is it "fake news"? One troll in a comment section may say so, and immediately destroy the authority of everyone before them. In an anonymous platform, every commenter carries the same level of authority. Social media, minus verified users and public celebrities, has effectually created a classless society. Similar to the communist Soviet Union, and thanks to trolls and hackers, no one can be sure of who to trust as authority on the internet, and we must simply accept that as a Term of Use.