After reading about Elan Gale's hoax, Andrew Sullivan has a bit of a rant about Buzzfeed. Now I like a good rant, and the idea that even web journalists ought to check stuff before they publish it is an excellent one. But this is probably not the story to base it on.
The thing is, everything that's interesting about the story is independent of whether it's true or not. Unless you are a friend of Diane (which no-one is because she doesn't exist), it's entirely about what Elan Gale thinks is an appropriately witty takedown of an insufferably entitled fellow passenger.
I read it (linked by my local newspaper) because I do love a good smackdown, and arrogant twits annoy me. By the time I was halfway through I was thinking that this Elan person was a bit of a jerk, and wondering what horrible things Diane was going to have done that would retrospectively justify all this (after all, it had "gone viral", so there must be something to it... right?). By the end, I had concluded that he was indeed a jerk, and I would probably prefer to have Diane on my flight than him.
But the point of what he had to say is not that he did and said those things; it's that he was proud of them. He thought they were witty and justified. Anyone who is going to do something or think something because of reading them will do it whether or not they're presented as fiction; they'll act or think because they've seen something persuasive in the description. Or in one of the billion or so comments it generated in favor or against.
Personally, I wish I hadn't read it. But not because it's not true; just because it was boring and unpleasant and taught me nothing. Perhaps as a hoax it might teach a few people to take twitter feeds with a pinch of salt; but I would be much happier if the lesson people took from it was about how much worse you look to other people when you're trying to be mean. Even when your target deserves it in some way.
The thing is, everything that's interesting about the story is independent of whether it's true or not. Unless you are a friend of Diane (which no-one is because she doesn't exist), it's entirely about what Elan Gale thinks is an appropriately witty takedown of an insufferably entitled fellow passenger.
I read it (linked by my local newspaper) because I do love a good smackdown, and arrogant twits annoy me. By the time I was halfway through I was thinking that this Elan person was a bit of a jerk, and wondering what horrible things Diane was going to have done that would retrospectively justify all this (after all, it had "gone viral", so there must be something to it... right?). By the end, I had concluded that he was indeed a jerk, and I would probably prefer to have Diane on my flight than him.
But the point of what he had to say is not that he did and said those things; it's that he was proud of them. He thought they were witty and justified. Anyone who is going to do something or think something because of reading them will do it whether or not they're presented as fiction; they'll act or think because they've seen something persuasive in the description. Or in one of the billion or so comments it generated in favor or against.
Personally, I wish I hadn't read it. But not because it's not true; just because it was boring and unpleasant and taught me nothing. Perhaps as a hoax it might teach a few people to take twitter feeds with a pinch of salt; but I would be much happier if the lesson people took from it was about how much worse you look to other people when you're trying to be mean. Even when your target deserves it in some way.
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