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Internet Hoaxes Galore
14 years ago
The hubub over the probable hoax that many news outlets fell for regarding a supposed lesbian feminist blogger of Syrian-American citizenship and heritage (she claimed to be born in Virginia) in Syria during the uprisings there, has left me amused that the press is only just now being introduced to something we netizens have been dealing with since this Internet thing got rolling.
The "Syrian lesbian" blogger of the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog that various news outlets had been giving so much attention to lately for some reason, perhaps due to the reportedly clever and skilled wiritng in the blog, had posted supposed photos of herself that I found surprisingly youngish looking for someone who claimed to be about 36 years old. Granted 36 is still relatively young and people age differently anyway, but still, this seemed a bit much.
Sure enough, the photos were actually of a woman who was about 26 years old, at the time of the photos, who was a Londoner who had no relation to the blogger. The photo swap thing is nothing new to those of us who have seen this sort of phony before, the temptation to post younger and more attractive pics than one's own must be strong for those who maintain an on-line persona and/or want to perpetrate a hoax that depends on Web charisma.
What's more, NPR has found on-line friends who report that they noticed her IP was closer to Scotland than Syria, but were told that this was just because she was using proxies to block her actual location for security reasons. Suspiciously though, in one of her blog entries she asked about grad schools available in...Scotland. Someone going by the same name had also been publishing a blog back in 2007 that was self-described as including both fact and fiction. Mmm...
To be fair to all the possibilities out there, yes, it's possible that this person is "real" in so far as being a lesbian blogger in Syria, and just didn't want to use their real name (understandably), made up a more colorful background and exploiting a supposedly American heritage plus more attractive photos for herself on Facebook, and then continued to blog from Syria. But I think the truth is more likely to involve a Scottish address, little or no connection to America (one of the supposedly American towns she referenced in her blog turned out to have no zip code), no current living in Syria, and a very different age and appearance, and perhaps even gender, than the person described on "her" blog.
As I mentioned, this is nothing new to Netizens. I recall even way back in the day that Furrymuck enjoyed a particularly nasty hoax involving some guy claiming to be someone dying of cancer, who was lavished with sympathy and attention by various muckers at the time. Personally, I had always felt that something was not quite...right about it. And I actually felt guilty about feeling that way when I supposedly should have been more friendly and sympathetic.
Turned out that my misgivings might have been on the mark after all though, when one of the admins investigated and quickly discovered that the person described to us did not exist. Oh, and if you are starting to think this was another sad story of someone just needing a little love and using falsehoods to get attention, I should mention that the username the hoaxer used turned out to be some French slang term for "shit." Oh, this person was having cruel fun at the expense of the hearts of others alright, make no mistake. But all's fair when it's for the lulz, right? This is just the Internet and nobody is responsible for anything they do here, right?
Ok, maybe not. Some people are trying to take a consolation prize by claiming that the Syrian blogger hoax at least drew attention to the cause, but that cause and situation of unrest already had front page coverage and didn't really need the phony story of a supposedly courageous blogger to draw further attention, attention that could now turn negative as people realize they were fooled and may start to wonder what else is false in this age of twitter revolutions and Facebook heroes. This stunt could cause real harm by way of a phony hero for the cause she supposedly supported. Ultimately, the real truth matters, not just what we would like to believe. The Internet is just another form of communication, it doesn't carry with it a magical zone of zero responsibility. Like all communications, we are responsible for the ones we make. While that reality shouldn't be used to chill free speech, it's something we should all at least keep in mind.
As you may have noticed, while I draw on some of my distant experiences of the past, I don't talk much about my current life on the Internets aside from mentioning my line of RL work in passing and roughly where I live and the local events and politics. While this is partly because I have an impulse towards privacy, and never fully understood the netizen tendency towards sharing all on the Web, all these pretend people also come to mind. If I can't prove anything I am describing on here, what's the point of describing it in detail? There are actually quite a few things from my life that I have not mentioned here because I was afraid nobody would believe me, even though they were true stories. What's the use if you can't "prove" anything on the Net?
We artists, at least the ones not smudging photos and then pretending they are paintings, or tracing stuff, anyway, that being a different kind of hoax in itself, should perhaps be content to present our creations, and are not obliged to serve up our lives as well. Not that there is anything wrong with sharing and, perhaps hypocritically, I love reading about y'all's lives on here, but I just don't want to share quite that much myself, at least not beyond mentioning general stuff from my life in passing.
(By the way, artists, please share more intimate details of your personal lives, and post more YouTube videos, photos of your art work spaces, and links to your twitter feed and MyFace pages and stream more of your live work on art etc. I love that stuff because it helps me to stal, um, observe you and get to know the story behind your work. Or something like that. Don't expect me to share too though...I'm shy.)
I suppose that the press agencies discovering the joy of false identities and creations on the Net is, if anything, overdue. For too long they have run with whatever they thought sounded nice or would be attention grabbing, treating blogs and rumors as if they were automatically factual. It's time to wake up and smell the bullshit. Here on the Net, just as we can't always trust the press, the press can't always trust us.
Rave
The "Syrian lesbian" blogger of the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog that various news outlets had been giving so much attention to lately for some reason, perhaps due to the reportedly clever and skilled wiritng in the blog, had posted supposed photos of herself that I found surprisingly youngish looking for someone who claimed to be about 36 years old. Granted 36 is still relatively young and people age differently anyway, but still, this seemed a bit much.
Sure enough, the photos were actually of a woman who was about 26 years old, at the time of the photos, who was a Londoner who had no relation to the blogger. The photo swap thing is nothing new to those of us who have seen this sort of phony before, the temptation to post younger and more attractive pics than one's own must be strong for those who maintain an on-line persona and/or want to perpetrate a hoax that depends on Web charisma.
What's more, NPR has found on-line friends who report that they noticed her IP was closer to Scotland than Syria, but were told that this was just because she was using proxies to block her actual location for security reasons. Suspiciously though, in one of her blog entries she asked about grad schools available in...Scotland. Someone going by the same name had also been publishing a blog back in 2007 that was self-described as including both fact and fiction. Mmm...
To be fair to all the possibilities out there, yes, it's possible that this person is "real" in so far as being a lesbian blogger in Syria, and just didn't want to use their real name (understandably), made up a more colorful background and exploiting a supposedly American heritage plus more attractive photos for herself on Facebook, and then continued to blog from Syria. But I think the truth is more likely to involve a Scottish address, little or no connection to America (one of the supposedly American towns she referenced in her blog turned out to have no zip code), no current living in Syria, and a very different age and appearance, and perhaps even gender, than the person described on "her" blog.
As I mentioned, this is nothing new to Netizens. I recall even way back in the day that Furrymuck enjoyed a particularly nasty hoax involving some guy claiming to be someone dying of cancer, who was lavished with sympathy and attention by various muckers at the time. Personally, I had always felt that something was not quite...right about it. And I actually felt guilty about feeling that way when I supposedly should have been more friendly and sympathetic.
Turned out that my misgivings might have been on the mark after all though, when one of the admins investigated and quickly discovered that the person described to us did not exist. Oh, and if you are starting to think this was another sad story of someone just needing a little love and using falsehoods to get attention, I should mention that the username the hoaxer used turned out to be some French slang term for "shit." Oh, this person was having cruel fun at the expense of the hearts of others alright, make no mistake. But all's fair when it's for the lulz, right? This is just the Internet and nobody is responsible for anything they do here, right?
Ok, maybe not. Some people are trying to take a consolation prize by claiming that the Syrian blogger hoax at least drew attention to the cause, but that cause and situation of unrest already had front page coverage and didn't really need the phony story of a supposedly courageous blogger to draw further attention, attention that could now turn negative as people realize they were fooled and may start to wonder what else is false in this age of twitter revolutions and Facebook heroes. This stunt could cause real harm by way of a phony hero for the cause she supposedly supported. Ultimately, the real truth matters, not just what we would like to believe. The Internet is just another form of communication, it doesn't carry with it a magical zone of zero responsibility. Like all communications, we are responsible for the ones we make. While that reality shouldn't be used to chill free speech, it's something we should all at least keep in mind.
As you may have noticed, while I draw on some of my distant experiences of the past, I don't talk much about my current life on the Internets aside from mentioning my line of RL work in passing and roughly where I live and the local events and politics. While this is partly because I have an impulse towards privacy, and never fully understood the netizen tendency towards sharing all on the Web, all these pretend people also come to mind. If I can't prove anything I am describing on here, what's the point of describing it in detail? There are actually quite a few things from my life that I have not mentioned here because I was afraid nobody would believe me, even though they were true stories. What's the use if you can't "prove" anything on the Net?
We artists, at least the ones not smudging photos and then pretending they are paintings, or tracing stuff, anyway, that being a different kind of hoax in itself, should perhaps be content to present our creations, and are not obliged to serve up our lives as well. Not that there is anything wrong with sharing and, perhaps hypocritically, I love reading about y'all's lives on here, but I just don't want to share quite that much myself, at least not beyond mentioning general stuff from my life in passing.
(By the way, artists, please share more intimate details of your personal lives, and post more YouTube videos, photos of your art work spaces, and links to your twitter feed and MyFace pages and stream more of your live work on art etc. I love that stuff because it helps me to stal, um, observe you and get to know the story behind your work. Or something like that. Don't expect me to share too though...I'm shy.)
I suppose that the press agencies discovering the joy of false identities and creations on the Net is, if anything, overdue. For too long they have run with whatever they thought sounded nice or would be attention grabbing, treating blogs and rumors as if they were automatically factual. It's time to wake up and smell the bullshit. Here on the Net, just as we can't always trust the press, the press can't always trust us.
Rave
Anyhow, many kudos for this, good sir. And granola bars too if you wish.
Oddly enough, it doesn't bother me so much. I would much rather be a part of a community that looks after one another and occasionally gets scammed than one which doesn't give a rats ass about each other. So now and then someone manages to make an elaborate enough story to pass muster. Sokay; the world is round and everything comes back eventually. It is going to happen now and then, because the only way to totally prevent it is to totally flush our community and comraderie down the toilet. And I steadfastly will not go down that road, willingly or unwillingly. If I want a community of "You're on your own - sucks to be you", there are certain political parties I could join. But I like having a soul and I like knowing that there's a bunch of people out there who give at least a quarter of a shit about everyone else around them.