As we have witnessed and discussed in this class, the line between fact and fiction online is blurry. Some take advantage of this situation in malicious ways: scamming and spamming people, taking over the online identities of strangers in order to steal information and ultimately their money. Some take advantage in order to create art in the form of literature. We have seen numerous examples of such art works this semester.
Let’s look at some examples of the fudging of facts into fiction.
Recently, Stephen Colbert responded to a factual error (to put it charitably) made by Jon Kyl in a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives. As part of a budget debate, Kyl said that “90%” of what Planned Parenthood did was abortions. Checking the public disclosure statements of Planned Parenthood, Colbert discovered that actually only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget went to abortion. The rest went to medical care for women.
Kyl later issued a statement saying that what he said about Planned Parenthood was “not intended to be a factual statement.” It was, apparently, intended to be a fiction that looked an awful lot like fact. In other words, a lie.
It was a great example of what Colbert calls “truthiness“: it’s true because someone wants it to be true, based on a personal or political agenda. That is, it’s subjective truth masquerading as objective truth.
Colbert then began a Twitter campaign in which people would say “truthy” things about Jon Kyl in a tweet, and then conclude with #notintendedtobeafactualstatement. This incited all sorts of creative acts of fiction, including yours truly who tweeted (on behalf of his digital literature class):
“Jon Kyle is a cyborg. Which is why he doesn’t understand women’s reproductive health. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement”
For more on this, check out these links:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/24039/october-17-2005/the-word—truthiness
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/12/colbert-fox-friends_n_847930.html
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Blurring the border between fact and fiction is nothing new in communications or literature. In fact, every big advance in communications usually leads to a period of time in which it is not clear what is fact and what is fiction, which some people use to their advantage for good (art) or ill (scams).
When print was first popular, and literacy expanding, there were many such literary hoaxes. Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson, is considered by many as the first novel in English. It was hugely popular and thought at first as a true story. It was something of a literary hoax, in that the novel was based on a letter-writing manual and included a document by a fictional reverend praising the novel, pretending it was real. Richardson’s rival, Henry Fielding, published a parody of Pamela, called Shamela, in which he pokes fun at Richardson’s characters and story, but also attacks Richardson for including the fictional reverend’s puff piece. In doing this, it is also likely that Fielding wanted to make money on the Pamela craze. Fielding later wrote another work using Richardson’s characters.
Like I said, consciously confusing fact and fiction is nothing new.
In this class, we first encountered it when we read Julian Dibble’s “A Rape in Cyberspace.” You’ll recall that Mr. Bungle, the demented clown, simulated rape in a MOO. It turns out that Mr. Bungle was in fact a whole dorm of randy college students. So in this case, we had people who were pretending to be someone they weren’t, for malicious purposes. And the fiction of rape was actually quite a factual experience for the people on the receiving end of Mr. Bungle’s transgressions.
http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
We also looked at fake Facebook profiles and Phweets (phony Twitter feeds). Again, what appeared to be factual in many cases was fiction. And again, some people use this confusion in malicious ways (hacking into profiles in order to get financial information), and others for artistic reasons.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/159492/15_fake_and_funny_twitter_accounts.html
We saw many examples of fake blogs. Some of these “flogs” were fiction blogs, used to create characters and stories, and some were “flack” blogs, blogs that were part of a surreptitious advertising campaign. As an example of the latter there was Jim and Laura and their cross-country trip visiting various Walmarts. It turns out later that they were paid by an advertising company hired by Walmart. In their blog entries, there was no mention of anything bad at Walmart. All that had been edited out by the advertising company.
Another, much more sophisticated, example is the PotatoFools ARG. An ARG is an alternative reality game. On the PotatoFools wiki it is defined thus: “an ARG is an Alternative Reality Game, not augmented but Alternative. It uses a real world context to solve puzzles using a community based group to eventually lead to a bigger goal.” In this case it offered a pseudo-conspiracy in which events and facts were manipulated by people working for an advertising campaign for the soon-to-be-released console game Portal 2.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1824635
The advertising campaign built around Jay Z’s book “Decoded” could probably also be considered a ARG.
http://bing.decodejay-z.com/?fbid=mokr-deCAWw&wom=false
Less tricky and more like literary fiction are the celebrity parody blogs we looked at in class, such as those at newsgroper.com. For instance, there is a celebrity flog by “the Donald,” Donald Trump.
http://www.newsgroper.com/donald-trump
Now we are more likely to see celebrity parody flogs and phweets. For most of these it’s satirical and fun, but, again, when the border between fact and fiction is not clear, it can have more serious implications. For instance, when someone impersonates a political figure, some people might take it seriously, and it can affect domestic policies and geopolitical arrangements. This is especially true, as in the example below, when hackers use celebrity accounts (and accounts of newsmakers) to send out pornography or gather financial information from people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/26/twitter-phishing-hack-hit_n_477977.html
We’ve also read wikis that willfully confuse fact and fiction. Because anyone can edit wikis, the line between fact and fiction in wikis is always blurry, because there are many opportunities for “truthiness.” This is very true of Wikipedia. For instance, some legislators have their aides edit pages that say less than flattering things about them or their policies. To their credit, Wikipedia editors usually revert these pages fairly quickly, if the legislators are prominent enough. This is why college professors won’t let you cite Wikipedia in papers: it’s quite possible that the entry you cite has a biased perspective, or that it has been edited since you saw it. In this way it lacks authority.
In terms of fiction wikis, there does not seem to be much malicious hacking on wikis. But there are many writers that use wikis artistically, in terms of literature. For instance, there is the Wikipedia parody Uncyclopedia. If you didn’t know better you would think Uncyclopedia and Wikipedia are one in the same. Their similarity in look is a good part of the fun, and the artistry.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Then there are fiction wikis that are more complicated, in a good way. The Imagine wiki, in Wikia, is an online encyclopedia for things that don’t exist. This is not a parody but a wiki that allows people to define and describe things that they have invented in their imagination, often as part of a larger fictional project.
http://imagine.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Similarly, there are wikis that try to define what is true in the context of a larger fictional universe. Examples would be Harry Potter wikis, Twilight wikis, and Star Wars wikis (link below). What is true in a given fictional world is considered “canon.” But then there are the versions of the characters and the stories in fan fiction. On many sites, this is called “fanon.” At Wookiepedia, fanon “applies to certain ‘facts’ that may have been accepted as a truth by a large number of fans, although not necessarily true, and thus either replaces an established canonical fact in the minds of those fans, or fills a plot-hole.” In some cases, the canonical authors of a fictional universe will accept fanon assertions, thus making them canonical. The important thing to take from this is that even in fictional worlds, people are concerned about facts and fictions, and try to distinguish what is “truthy” from what is “truth” in that given world.
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