U. of Edinburgh to Investigate Student Involved in ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ Blog Hoax
June 13, 2011, 3:48 pm
The University of Edinburgh will investigate a male student from the United States who drew worldwide attention for pretending to be a lesbian blogger in Syria, a university spokesman said Monday.
The Edinburgh master’s student, Tom MacMaster, confessed on Sunday to being the author of “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” a blog that gained notice for its depictions of the Syrian government’s crackdown on protesters.
Mr. MacMaster blogged under the pseudonym Amina Arraf. His site became a sensation after someone purporting to be a relative of Arraf wrote a post saying that government security agents had hauled away the blogger, prompting the U.S. State Department to start an investigation. In response, Mr. MacMaster acknowledged the hoax and apologized.
Hi everyone.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most common complaints I get is that there are too many linked stories on the site. That's actually not a problem for me, as I don't scour the interwebs much, and most stories I see posted here I've never even heard about. But, lots of writers do email me bitching about the practice.
Lately, there's been an uptick of linked stories (like the one above), and I wanted to head off another set of complaints.
Terry P. is responsible for linking to a number of these stories, and he's also quite good at digging up the occasional vidshizzle, another kind of CM entry that folks love to hate. He's a community member, too, and has his own reasons for bringing these stories to us.
The posting traffic has been VERY light lately, and so perhaps the ratio of linked stories to posts just feels a bit off.
I'd ask Terry (and anyone else) to be judicious in bringing other material to the site. Always be sure just to clip a little of the article's
"flava" so we may judge if we'd like to click an included link for more info.
Thanks,
Fab
There's ANOTHER man posing as a lesbian online, "Paula Brooks" of Lezgetreal.com. The site seems to be down, but here's a Washington Post article about it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/paula-brooks-editor-of-lez-get-real-also-a-man/2011/06/13/AGld2ZTH_blog.html
ReplyDeleteFab? Do you have anything to tell us?
ReplyDelete:)
I'm gravely concerned about Terry. He is my nephew and also my cousin's mistress. And I saw government security agents haul him away early this morning. Can somebody please help?
ReplyDeleteI don't get the big, cranky deal about linked articles. Often as not, it's something I haven't seen and am really glad to come across. Plus, the comments from CMers are fun and interesting.
ReplyDeleteHow hard is it to scroll past something you don't want to read? Why to the cranksters have to harsh on everyone's fun?
I've seen the complaints in comments before, and I understand. I post stories for 2 reasons: 1) because I think they're of interest to the readers, and 2) I hate coming to the page and seeing no new stuff. I'm sorry if that puts me on the outs, but the page is only interesting to me when it's active, and it hasn't been. I love CM, and don't want to to do anything to ruin it, but I think some linked articles have had interesting comment threads that make them worth posting.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
TP
The linked stories don't bother me. If they're interesting and relevant to us, I see why they're there. But sometimes I just don't get why they're on the blog, in which case I just assume I'm not part of the 'in-clique' who understands their reference and I just scroll on by... No biggie.
ReplyDeleteTerry and everybody who posts articles,
ReplyDeleteI don't mind them but I am more interested in what you think about the stories. The news itself isn't really "news." We've heard these stories before, or at least the general topic - plagiarism, cost of education, etc. What about the article made it worth posting?
I must admit that I'd prefer smackdowns, etc. but I really just want to know what everybody's up to in the academy.
I'm a lurker and love the links. I can't think of many that I would have read had they not been linked here. And usually the comment sections end up being pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteI definitely prefer original to recycled content (and will even dash off a post about dead grandparents that I probably wouldn't bother with otherwise when the page is looking a bit link-heavy). But every time I'm tempted to complain (or have just complained) about too many linked stories, I find one that I really want to post myself. And I generally enjoy the ones that Terry posts, and the conversations that ensue. I do think that keeping the excerpts short and providing some commentary, questions or suggestions for follow-up discussion, etc., helps tie outside content into the ongoing conversation on the blog.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I found myself thinking about this story (and the Lez Get Real one, too), and was half-tempted to post about it. Both of the blog impersonations described above strike me as ethically questionable, but the pseudonyms here at CM don't, and I was trying to figure out why. I think it's because we're not only openly pseudonymous here, but also quite open about the fact that we're adopting personae that may or may not share key characteristics with our real-life selves. So we wouldn't really be shocked to discover, as I think someone once suggested, that Strelnikov's comments are written by a female fundamentalist Christian librarian from the midwest, or that Yaro's are written by an aging biker with multiple tattoos. In short, we're not pretending that our pseudonyms conceal only our names. The "lesbian" bloggers mentioned above, on the other hand, don't seem to have been as open as adopting not only an alternative name, but also an alternative persona.
I, for one, am shocked and appalled that someone lied on the Interwebz. Gather the villagers! Grab the torches! The liar must be punished post-haste.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I like Terry's links.
Just for the record, Tom MacMaster has threatend genius blogger Max Blumenthal with legal action (!) for reporting the story on his blog along with calling Blumenthal a "self-hating Jew"(!!)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.maxblumenthal.com/2011/06/fraudmeister-tom-macmaster-calls-me-a-self-hating-jew/
Dude is definitely six short of a baker's dozen....Finally, it should be noted that MacMaster uses a Celtic spelling of his last name (Mac Maighstir) on Facebook. I have to agree with Blumenthal, this little hoax has probably damaged the Syrian Revolt because the Ba'athist party can use it to claim that "Western Agents" are backing/controlling/helping the Revolt or that it isn't an organic response to the tyranny of the regime.