Admire those folks, why don't we?

[asthfghl]

Greetings, ma' fellow gullible dupes experts in critical thinking! Im'ma occupy you with a funny story that unfolded around these latitudes for the last fornight.



The caption says, "All of these Bulgarians have returned to their homeland to transfer their knowledge and expertise to us. They're proof that one could be successful abroad, regardless of their background. Please share so that more people could learn about them!"

A funny campaign started on some of the fun/troll groups on FB here in Bulgaria a couple weeks ago, possibly prompted by this photo.

Various photos, purportedly of little-known Bulgarians who've made a successful career abroad and then returned home to contribute to our society, started circulating around those groups. All of them were actually of world-famous porn actors and actresses. The ingenuous authors of the meme slapped some Bulgarian-sounding names to those images and made up the heroic stories about successful careers in science and medicine, asking people to share the pride with those successful Bulgarians. And then they sat back and watched.

Many caught the bait. They shared the "stories" and commended these fake characters for their success, and for the decision to return to their home country.

One successful character was claimed to have invented the "Sinev principle" about the penetration and spreading of matter inside black holes. Dr Sinev had supposedly turned down a prestigious astrophysicist job position at NASA where he could've been hired for 20,000 times the average Bulgarian salary, and chose to return to his country. That's actually Johnny Sin, a porn actor. His "story" was shared 20,000+ times on Facebook.

Ron Jeremy was another featured porn actor, presented as if he was a heart surgeon. Sacha Grey was another example. The list goes on.

The initiator of the meme, one Ilian Dukov, later explained that his purpose was to display the fake-news culture that's been prevalent on the Internet. Adding the element of patriotism to the mix was a great catalyst as well.

Things reached a climax when a prominent TV anchor called Gala (something like the local equivalent of Oprah) praised "Sashka" the successful Bulgarian lady (actually Sacha Grey), and her panel of interlocutors also caught the bait and commented on the fake story without suspecting that this was all an invented meme. Thing is, Gala and the likes of her abound around our media and social networks (and not just ours), spreading woo and pseudoscience and rumors just for the sake of ratings and popularity, without fact-checking anything - and lots of people usually catch the bait hook, line and sinker. Gala received a lot of mockery for her error, but I'm not sure those who mocked her are completely immune to manipulations of this kind.

So the experiment was largely successful, in that it exposed modern Internet culture, obsessed with fact-free "news". It confirms the fact that real, serious journalism, analytical thought and fact-checking is constantly losing ground. Society seems to have reached rock-bottom in terms of critical thinking, and is now digging into the dirt. People have forgotten that the Internet is not a media, even less a reliable fact source.

By the way, even a week after the funny hoax transpired and was exposed and duly explained around the "real" media, one Mila Kelifareva (aka Mia Khalifa), herein presented as a volunteer at a local animal refuge, is still making the rounds on Facebook, and garnering hundreds of clicks, shares and likes. Go figure!

Comments

[luzribeiro]

Most people are either stupid or lazy, or both.

[johnny9fingers]

But the problem is that it sounds just as elitist, patronising, and paternalist when you say that as when I do.

[luzribeiro]

Doesn't make it any less true.

[johnny9fingers]

So what is the solution?

I always used to say I'd beat education into everybody from an early age, as I'm a bit of an educational Stalinist; but I won't do that to my own kids, so I guess I can't advocate it generally. We cannot force reasoning or learning upon others.

And maybe because we can't force reasoning or learning upon others we have to change our polities to adapt to this circumstance.

Perhaps make political enfranchisement dependent on engagement. Active citizenship, if you like. Active citizens and passive citizens are pretty much what we have now, but naming the distinctions lets folk know what is going on. Too many folk feel they are passive citizens, and in a democracy like ours they have the tools to express their displeasure only in destructive ways. Give them the tools for an active citizenship wherein they can engage with the political process meaningfully, and just maybe they will better understand the problems confronting them. I mean, for example, if the less-well informed in the UK electorate had actually known what Brexit entailed I'm pretty certain they wouldn't have voted quite as they did. But the only engagement with the political process they had was a protest. This is a structural problem that also seems to exist in most other polities.

[luzribeiro]

There's no simple solution. It's a matter of balance between a myriad of factors, including societal tradition. There are societies that value knowledge, diligence, critical thinking, education, industriousness, as well as cooperation and solidarity. The balance is in favor of reason rather than un-reason there. Examples: Scandinavia. And then, there are societies valuing selfishness, consumerism, aggressive competition, as well as institutionalism and self-sufficiency and exceptionalism. You know whom I'm talking about. And then, there are all those societies that follow the lead of the more influential ones, like most of the Second and Third World.

[johnny9fingers]

There is no simple solution.

There can't be. The accretion of of various selfishnesses and kinds of individualism, in combination with supra-national corporations, and the onset of social media have combined to give us this turbulent storm. But it presages things to come.

Whether we act collectively on this storm being a legitimate hurricane warning is another matter. But like you, I think we have to try.

[fridi]

Of all the factors for the success of this stunt, patriotism is probably the least significant. The main one is the common level of knowledge among the people, regardless of the country.

[garote]

That is some awesome lulz, that is