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On Facebook, fools and fakes
Published in The Egyptian Gazette on 04 - 04 - 2018


By: Simon Willis
People who feel an overwhelming urge to get themselves noticed on Facebook and those play practical jokes on others: two categories of human beings who deserve pity and are in desperate need of professional help.
Who in their right mind sends a picture of himself and his family sitting down to a meal in a restaurant in a European country? Then you are sent an image of their Sunday lunch with the caption ‘Not bad for 6 euros'. Not that I have a Facebook account. These pictures I received on Whatsapp – another waste to time and space. Social media is the platform not so much for the ‘me-generation', rather the ‘look-at-me-aren't-I-wonderful-generation. Facebookers are narcissistic individuals who could not give a toss about you and your activities. Egocentric windbags in the workplace you can escape from in the car park, the little-known broom cupboard on the sixth floor, or another country, where egomaniacal windbaggery will most likely be in a foreign language from which you can switch off more easily.
As I write, I am listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme about the fascination with the planet Mars. The trip to the Red Planet would be one-way. Think of that: send persons who spend inordinately large amounts of time on social media on a two-and-a-half-year journey to the other side of the Solar System. Let's hope that they kill themselves in the cramped conditions on the vehicle on the way to their destination. Even if they survive the journey, let their gums bleed and teeth fall out due to the high levels of radiation on Mars. As for communication, their message would take 20 minutes to reach Earth, which is way beyond their patience level. That gives one an excuse for never answering their trite meaningless messages.
And practical jokers can join them on an expedition to Mars. One supposes that every dog has his day. Therefore, every trickster is free to express him or herself on 1st April.
April Fools' Day has been celebrated since the 19th century.
"Hoax stories may be reported by the press and other media on this day and explained on subsequent days," says the website thinkmarketingmagazine.com.
Says Wikipedia, "A popular theory for the origin of the holiday holds that those who continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1st after the 1582 implementation of the Gregorian Christian calendar were mocked as ‘fools' or ‘fish'. In several countries, the fish is a common symbol of the tradition." Sounds like a large quantity of elderly, orange-coloured ornamental fish, i.e. a load of old carp.
Such hoax stories include a story about the discovery of dinosaur bones in the vicinity of the Giza Pyramids of Giza, the announcement by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West that they had chosen Cairo as the venue for their wedding.
This year, egyptianstreets.com reported plans to introduce "an Egyptian Facebook"
The Minister of Communications was said to have announced plans "to roll out" a local version of the narcissists' site.
The minister was reported to have said that data would be better protected and that citizens would to "help achieve stability in the country". Definitely, carp. All this came about while Facebook came under fire for allowing the "private analytics firm Cambridge Analytica for having improperly obtained personal information of millions of Facebook users".
Of course, the entry concludes with the following, "Egypt has not commented on the statement released by Facebook on April Fool's Day as of the time of writing." Tthey have to say that, don't they. Otherwise, there are people out there who would believe this piece of nonsense.
More pernicious is, however, fake news – yellow journalism – which is said to be written and published in order to mislead, thereby damaging "an agency, an entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically. While April 1st hoaxes are intended to amuse, fake news is more sinister. As with everything under the sun, fake news is not new.
For example, how's this for a piece with an Egyptian connection?
During the first century BC, Octavian directed a smear campaign against his rival Mark Antony, whom he portrayed as a heavy drinker, a man of multiple illicit affairs with women, and "a mere puppet of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII.
Octavian later published a document supposed to be the will of Marc Antony, claiming that on his death, Marc Antony expressed his wish to have his remains placed in the mausoleum of the Ptolemies.
Marc Antony killed himself after the defeat at the Battle of Actium on hearing a rumour hatched by Cleopatra herself claiming that she had committed suicide.
A "lunar animal" discovered by John Herschel on the Moon is another instance of fake news part of the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. The New York Sun ran a series of articles about a real-life astronomer and a made-up colleague who had observed strange life-forms on the Moon.
This material proved so popular that it attracted new subscribers. Even when this "penny paper" admitted the following next month that the series had been a hoax, there was very little backlash after it. Sounds like the kind of stuff we used to read in al-Sahafa al-Safraa in the Noughties, although the p[eddlers of such trash did not admit to their falsehood.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has published a nifty little infographic on how to spot a news story. The authors advice the reader to consider the source, to understand its mission and purpose. Read beyond the headline to understand the whole story, they say, adding that the reader should check the writer to establish if they are "real and credible".
The devisers of the infographic counsel us to assess the supporting sources to ensure they support the claims and to check the date of publication, i.e. is the story relevant and up to date. Ask yourself if the story is a joke. Review your own biases, they say, to see if they affect your judgement. Finally, ask experts, thus obtaining confirmation from independent, knowledgeable personages. Well, if you take the time to do all of that, you will end up (a) never reading anything at all and (b) disbelieving everything you see in print, even the train timetable. There is only so much incredulity to go around.


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