Shouts From Down Under

F4KE! Or...

After sharing a news article about Vladimir Putin storming out of the G20 Summit in Brisbane, on Facebook, I was told it didn't happen, that it was a fake news story, like so many others put on FB, and other social media. The reader of my shared post was a "little disappointed, and thought I would have researched this better".

I was a little startled, thinking, What an idiot I am for being sucked in, and not "at least checked on snopes" as the person telling me advised. And this was all fair enough. Rightly so, I should research more thoroughly, and this was a timely wake up call, not to be spouting off about stuff I know nothing about.

Well, it turns out that yes, Putin did leave the G20 early, citing "tiredness", and perhaps the media have exaggerated this incident a bit, who would know? But after revisiting this with a Google search, it seems that ALL the global news mobs said the same thing. Fake or not, I'm a tiny cog in the works, and I can mostly only go on what is said in the mainstream media by the giant media moguls.
(Having said this, as some of WDC's members know, I DID manage to scoop all the US news broadcasters one day, with the news of Ukraine's pending invasion and Crimea take over.
Yes, tiny little me, somehow knew this information before most people in the west. It just proves you don't have to be famous or whatever, to have a go at things sometimes- just know the right person at the right time, and that person be trustworthy, plus a bit of risk taking )

Isaiah 53:1
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?

The whole point of this blog entry is; what is fake and what isn't, in research, in news, in rumours, in whatever information we are searching for in our real lives, or the virtual life on the Internet?

I decided to have a look online, because most people already know about real life fakeness. It's relatively easy to spot, I feel. Face to face with people, we usually have a fair idea when something's dodgy or a lie. Don't we? People ripping you off with a bent car, that breaks down just after the warranty runs out doesn't count.

There have been hoaxes, famous ones, throughout history.

http://www.9news.com.au/world/2014/11/18/10/18/new-zealand-mans-viral-eel-hoax-f...

Google search for "Job Candidate hoax"
About 2,150,000 results (0.28 seconds)

http://www.askamanager.org/2013/04/i-think-i-went-to-a-fake-job-interview.html

http://www.fox23.com/news/news/outsmarting-fake-weather-forecasts/nhJKP/

Is snopes, the hoax and rumour validating website, reliable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com

http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/04/27/snopes-liberal-bias-and-trusting...

www.elenafilatova.com
Elena Filatova- a hoax or not?
http://open.salon.com/blog/mary_mycio/2011/01/21/the_chernobyl_biker_chick_that_...

After contacting Mary Mycio personally, and asking questions about Elena, I feel I still have no real evidence either way, if Elena's Chernobyl Alienation Zone antics were fake, or genuine.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/906332.Wormwood_Forest

In Mary's book, Wormwood Forest, she indicates there is proof that Elena is a fraud, and that she visited Elena's home in person, in Kiev, but the motorcyclist couldn't be contacted, and was a fraud.
She is impossible to contact, to validate anything.
As far as my fiction novel goes, this is probably irrelevant. I'll probably leave the chapter alone. It just adds extra intrigue to the plot, regardless of world opinion of what really happened.

Mary wrote an article for the LA times, July 6 2004: ▼

July 6, 2004

THE WORLD
Account of Chernobyl Trip Takes Web Surfers for a Ride

By Mary Mycio, Special to The Times

PRIPYAT, Ukraine — Kate Brown began thinking about visiting this high-rise ghost town in the mid-1990s, when she was researching a book about the region before it was evacuated after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Then she saw a website about a young woman's lone motorcycle rides through Chernobyl's exclusion zone. The site, http://www.kiddofspeed.com , attracted tens of millions of viewers and became the most-visited site on Angelfire.com, a Web page hosting service.

"I was intrigued," said Brown, an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. She spoke while strolling along the vegetation-choked sidewalks and cracked roadways of Pripyat, about a mile from the nuclear power plant where the 1986 accident took place.

"Elena," whom several Internet sources identified as Lena Filatova of Kiev, has been described as "fearless," "heroic" and "seriously whacked" in the virtual chatter the website generated.

When asked by e-mail why the story of a raven-haired beauty roaring through a radioactive wasteland attracted so much attention, cyberpunk author and futurist Bruce Sterling responded: "It's a post-apocalyptic adventure story. Very 'Mad Max.' "

And it is, evidently, equally fictional.

"That story is not true! She did not ride a motorcycle alone in the zone! She came with her husband and a friend on a regular tour," insisted Rimma Kyselytsia, who was the group's official guide. She identified the woman in the images on the website as Filatova and has the documents to show that Filatova's tour was organized by a Kiev travel agency and that her party traveled in a car provided by Chernobylinterinform, the agency that ushers all visitors to the exclusion zone.

The visit took place March 16, about two weeks after the website appeared. Since then, the curious have made their way to Chernobyl inquiring about Elena's adventure — among them two Norwegian biology teachers who arrived on bicycle hoping to retrace the journey. A guard turned them away.

"Whoever put this together was never actually here," said Kyselytsia, leafing through a printout of the images on the website. Although it has been updated several times, the site's original contents survive in duplicates elsewhere on the Internet, and on the computers of people who downloaded them.

The updated site does not appear to contain any authentic images of "Elena" or a motorcycle in any Chernobyl location. Four pictures on the updated site can be traced to a Ukrainian coffee table book published in 2000, some are aerial shots, and many are anachronisms. One photo is of chemical showers that have not existed for years. In another, the tall ventilation stack of the ruined reactor looms above some saplings. But those trees have since grown so high that only the tip of the stack is visible today.

After the March 16 trip, the website was updated with new pictures, including one of a motorcycle near a sign that reads "Chernobyl district" in Ukrainian. But that sign is several miles south of the barbed-wire fence and checkpoints surrounding the exclusion zone, which stretches almost 19 miles in all directions from the disaster site.

According to Kyselytsia and Mykola Slobodianiuk, who drove the group that day, Filatova's husband, Igor Filatov, told them that he had ridden his motorcycle to the Chernobyl checkpoint but was refused entry.

"The idea is absurd," Slobodianiuk said. "I have worked in the zone since 1986, and I have never seen anyone on a motorcycle."

Closed motor vehicles are the rule in the zone, where radiation levels are thousands of times normal in places. A moving vehicle stays ahead of the dust it raises. When it stops, it is enveloped in its own — often radioactive — wake.

After bumping for hours over the zone's crumbled, potholed and, in many places, barely existent roads, it is difficult to believe that anyone could ride a motorcycle on them.

The updated website depicts the lone rider in various zone locations, often with a motorcycle helmet in a bag slung across her shoulders.

"When I asked about the helmet, she just said her husband had some ideas," Kyselytsia recalled as she led Brown and a reporter into the Pripyat high-rise that the group had visited. "He took most of the pictures. He also staged some of them."

Kyselytsia pointed out the mailbox that the website claimed contained a hunting and fishing publication. It was empty, and Kyselytsia maintains that it was empty when she and the Filatovs entered the building.

"This one left me blinking," science fiction writer Neil Gaiman posted on his website after reading that "Elena's" story was not entirely true. "Not so much because it was a fraud, as why anyone would bother to create such a fraud."

Neither Lena nor Igor Filatov were available for comment. A woman who answered the door at their apartment said they had left town and could not be reached.

The Internet "Elena," however, is unapologetic. "I just wanted to show people Chernobyl," she wrote in an author's note after doubts about the story began to surface. "I did this for free, for no fame and I did this with love for my country"

I found this text version on http://www.r6messagenet.com/forums/170474-post13.html

Three things are certain.
1. Elena is enigmatic, whether accidentally or on purpose.
2. Chernobyl wasn't a hoax, or fake, even if the true scope and effects were downplayed, and Elena, or Lena, did bring it to world attention.

Also, it seems, 3. You can't ride a motorcycle in the Zone...

******

You've read of times when people mistakenly sing their own hilarious version of song lyrics to different popular hits. Often a tune and the singing is appealing even if you never knew the lyrics clearly. Sometimes you hear people singing along, mumbling all the words they don't know, and then sing the last one clearly and loudly, so that people think they know the song, think they are cool, think they have street credibility, think they are hip, etc.

So these days we have the Internet making it possible, and so much easier, to search for those mysterious lyrics of songs we used to know, "back in the day".

In doing this, we can unearth some fascinating facts about how the song was written, and why those lyrics or words were chosen.
However, lyrics can be misinterpreted, and deeper, complex meaning mistakenly placed on what was written, than was meant by the songwriter, or artist.

Crowded house, with their song, Distant Sun (http://youtu.be/3xQsfvD0QbI), for instance, could be interpreted as having some sort of biblical depth, yet apparently this wasn't the case when it was written.

Then this song, Mean to Me has a gem of factual meaning contained in there. At least, as a prompt for research, it worked for me...



She came all the way from America
She had a blind date with destiny
And the sound of Te Awamutu
Had a truly sacred ring
Now her parents are divorced
And her friend's committing suicide

I could not escape
A plea from the heart
You know what it means to me
You said, "Don't walk away
I'm down on my knees
Well, please don't be mean to me

So I talked to you for an hour
In the bar of a small town hotel
And you asked me what I was thinking
I was thinking of a padded cell
With a black and white TV
To stop us from getting lonely

I could not escape
A plea from the heart
You know what it means to me
You said, "Don't walk away
I'm down on my knees
Well, please don't be mean to me

Didn't know, I could not escape
A plea from the heart
Mysterious sympathy
I couldn't wait for a chance
To walk out the door
You know what it means to me

I saw you lying in the arms of a poet
I heard him tell you tantalizing lies
Whad'd'ya know, whad'd'ya know

I could not escape
You're down on the floor
You know what it means to me
I couldn't wait for a chance
Walk out the door
Mean, mean

I could not escape
I'm down on my knees
You know what it means, what it means
What it means, what it means
In the arms of a poet
You know what it means

What, I wondered, was the significance of the words Te-Awamutu, in this song? And no, I'd never heard of the place or took much notice of lyrics, or any CH song origination.

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/video/finns-te-awamutu-roadside-stories

I wonder how much of my personal experience of the past has crept into my writing? Will people wonder where some of my stuff came from, or whether some idiosyncrasies, or anecdotes were based on real events or people?

Writing is so much more difficult if we are being fake, or if we aren't digging deeper into our own psyche. That is my belief, and I'm sticking to it.

But it's amazing what can be created, manufactured or crafted, from bits of truth, bits of fact, bits of reality, and cobbled into something that will fool the entire world.

I don't feel so bad now, that I HAVE been tricked, or conned into sharing stuff on FB, that I thought was genuine, after seeing the gigantic successful hoaxes carried out in the past.

And you still have nightmares about the Loch Ness Monster, don't you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster

Neither proven, or disproven, just "opinionated".

Yes, as for Elena Filatova, I feel she is just the same. Whatever. She did draw international attention to Chernobyl, and as long as she comes alive in my novel, that's all that matters to me.

The children are real. Their illnesses are real. Their deaths are real.

But who hath believed our report?

STATIC

Chernobyl Lonely Heart's Club by Sparky  (13+) The progeny of a brooding parent in meltdown; what hope remains for these children? #1939910 by Sparky

STATIC

The Garden of Pripyat  (13+) This poem is dedicated to Lyubov Sirota & Pripyat. Click the links to learn why. #1899777 by Sparky

The survivors aren't fake. Neither are the gutsy people who still try to make sense of it all, try to look at the positives, try to reach out for the better things. They try, and succeed.

This...from yesterday.





Sparky