How to Recognize a Fake Trend
Ankle-length scarves ! What a ridiculous trend! Twitter users ask each other how such a silly thing as ankle-length scarves can be real. “Well – and I’m afraid to reveal it because so many real media fall into this trap – it’s not real. This is an obvious joke. This is how it turned into a “crazy trend” that everyone laughs at and resent on social media.
Some of you have already noticed that the scarves in the photo were made in Photoshop. This is because there is no trend for ankle scarves. I’m not saying there is actually only one person who once wore tiny ankle scarves. I say that the photo is taken from this anecdote article on the German satirical site Der Postillon .
You see, Der Postillon published a humorous article about teenagers in Berlin wearing scarves around their ankles to keep warm in trendy short pants. This article was then distributed by the Italian satirical site Lercio . Lercio pretends to be no more real than Der Postillon; The first page includes stories of a hermit hiding in his mailbox and the Pope’s struggle for parking spots for the Popemobile.
When a blogger from the American site BestProducts.com – not a satirical site – picked up the story with the scarf on her ankle , she either didn’t notice that it was satire or decided the story would be better if she didn’t mention that part. … She knitted a $ 11 baby scarf that can be used as an ankle warmer in a pinch, and copied a photoshopped photo from Lercio. On BestProducts.com, the photo was signed: “We may receive a commission on purchases made through our links. Why do they trust us? “
Then the more famous edition of Country Living spread the post word for word . Radio station Mix 105.1’s blog has collected this story as well. Both posts tweeted this story with incredulous captions.
To get the story this far, a few people had to ignore some obvious warning signs. The BestProducts.com blogger might not have looked at any other page on Lercio, the satire site. But she still cited the source, which means that everyone who spread the story hasn’t been able to verify if the source is satirical. They also had to ignore the fake image of “ankle-length scarves” when they copied it to their sites. But no one has time for that. And there are many reasons not to check when you poke fun at fictional people for wearing fictional ankle-length scarves.
In his essay False Witnesses 2, Fred Clarke mentions the Kitten Burning Coalition. This is a group of people who, upon hearing the terrible news that someone has burned a kitten, bravely declare themselves to tell the world that they are personally against kitten burning. This does nothing, since almost everyone is against burning kittens, and this has not stopped kitten burners. It only gives the speaker a false sense of moral superiority. And if no one has actually burned a kitten lately, the Coalition Against Kitten Burning tends to find a few cases that they might be angry with.
What you see in the “ankle-length socks trend” is a much more innocent version of this. The Internet finds a goal that we can all agree on, and suddenly it doesn’t matter if the goal really exists. In this case, instead of a gruesome crime, it’s a fashion crime – an acceptable target that replaces everything we hate “hipsters” and “millennials” for. (Hipster hate is often a code of homophobia and misogyny, so it’s not entirely innocent, but broadly it’s Laurel / Yanni, not Pizzagate.) We can all feel superior to those fictional fashion aficionados who buy scarves for their ankles …
And since the feeling of superiority gives us pleasure , we hate being called names . Just try to point out the truth to someone in those Twitter threads that make fun of ankle scarves. There’s a good chance they’ll yell at you, say that’s not the point, it’s about these damn Brooklyn hipsters !!! They will defend their pleasure, and they wo n’t like you coming in and trying to make them feel stupid.
But don’t laugh at them – if every time you come across a piece of news, you’re not ready to go to the source. Let’s be honest; you don’t have time for this. Someday you will be the one to fall for the deception.