ITF Hoaxes

(A commentary in The Utopian Reservoir, on the case of the Damascus lesbian blogger who turned out to be a man, and not even a gay, causing general dismay about the unreliability of the Web.... and a new realization that ¡people can wear masks!):

Oh well, there were literary hoaxes before there was an Internet, and there were literary pseudonyms like George Eliot before the Internet avatars... but there was never such an outcry not to trust books or their authors, or literature as a whole. I suppose we just need to be more aware of the characteristics of the medium, and to trust information which comes via several channels, not just one. In so-called "real life" we've got to be multimedia too, otherwise we are liable to become a figment of the imagination, e.g. an telephonic acquaintance, or an epistolary one, or a mask at the office.

Pink blogging allowed

 

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