Why is Prince George called “Prince George”? It might be in honour of King George III. But no one’s quite sure.
The local First Nation, on the other hand, know exactly why they have their name. “Lheidli T’enneh” quite literally means “people of the confluence”. This is because they lived and live at the meeting of the Fraser and Nechako rivers.
Ever since learning this, I’ve wished early European settlers hadn’t insisted on changing things. We’re still people of a confluence, not just of rivers but of highways, a railroad, education, and an international airport. But instead, here we are naming ourselves after a foreign monarch who never set foot anywhere near here. Our name, the very essence of our identity, has nothing to do with who we are and what we do. It’s meaningless.
* * *
Today, the 2015 Winter Games announced that the Lheidli T’enneh would be the first ever “Official Host First Nation” for the Canada Winter Games. It will involve using the Dakelh language in the programming, and the raising of the Lheidli flag, a first for the city of Prince George.
This is on the heels of a few other initiatives: the Tourism Prince George offices downtown have pictures of animals in their windows, accompanied by the Dakhelh language words for them. Along George Street, there are bilingual “Welcome” signs. And this past summer, city hall unveiled a public art piece by Jennifer Annaïs Pighin and Robert Frederick that incorporates Lheidli T’enneh traditions and history into its design.
I think all of these are great ideas. One of the most important things a community can have is a unique identity, and the best place to get that is its unique history. George Street is, for the most part, a generic street that one would be hard-pressed to differentiate from any other street in any other town. But add a language that you won’t find anywhere else, and you have much more a sense of place. The history of a territory is something that can and should be embraced by everyone who calls it home. “Prince George” means nothing. “Lheidli T’enneh” does.
What happened in Connecticut sucks. No question. But, like all things, it’s important to look at this in context.
I say this because over the past few days, people have made comments to me and online to the effect that, “I don’t know what’s happening to this world” and “things just keep getting worse.” When, in fact, they don’t.
How do I know? Numbers! One of my least favourite subjects in high school, but still highly important. And here’s what they say: between 1992 and the latter half of the last decade (the most recent period that data is available), homicides and violence in U.S. schools are down. Like, a lot. This is based on data from the U.S. Department of Justice, National Center for Education Statistics, FBI, and others. Here, for example, is homicides by students on school grounds during the school day, as graphed by the Curry School of Education:
Here’s number of students carrying weapons at school:
This latest event will change those numbers. And there’s a lot of subtlety to the data, which you can delve into more in this Indicators of School Crime and Safety report. But once we start talking about how to make our schools safer (and yes, I know that will spill over into Canada), it’s important that we don’t all start from the baseline assumption that things are worse now then they were before, because even in the United States where these sensationalist media events come from, things are generally trending in a positive direction.
The media’s role in all this
So why does it seem like it’s getting worse? Let’ s talk media.
First of all, Morgan Freeman has not shared his opinion on the media’s role. So there’s that.
But more realistically, it is entirely fair to say that the media has a role in helping people perceive the world as a harsher, more dangerous place. Because we have twenty-four hour access to the words and images and emotions coming out of Connecticut, it’s going to be that much easier for us to understand what happened and then to imagine it happening to us. In fact, we’re being actively asked to imagine it happening to us in a quest for media interactivity: “how do you feel about these shootings?” posted online or asked on TV prompts us to think a little more about it. And that makes it seem more real- and more likely.
I don’t know that this is necessarily the media being irresponsible, though. If local news outlets didn’t provide coverage because it’s irrelevant, there would be questions of why, when that’s all anyone else is talking about. Why isn’t this outlet doing it’s job?
I think the easiest and probably best explanation comes from author/columnist Dan Gardner: People like stories. The most compelling pieces of journalism contain stories. And it’s far easier to make a story out of a one-off tragedy than a general positive trend. To paraphrase Mr. Gardner, the story of a child who isn’t in danger is a boring story.
But it’s important to remember those stories are out there.
Today is International Tea Day. Canada doesn’t celebrate it, but I used it as an opportunity to tell a story that I’ve wanted to for a long time. This past summer, I was visiting my grandma in Dawson Creek when we started talking about tea flavours and wondering whether differences in tap water might affect it. This led to me comparing mineral levels in different neighbourhoods around Prince George, researching a 2,000-year-old treatise on tea, and calling up one of western Canada’s only tea sommeliers. Have a cup, and listen at Daybreak North or in my audio portfolio.
Of all the writing to come out of the punishment of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, the most informative I’ve seen is by lawyer Bob Tarantino in the National Post. He argues in favour of the judge’s ruling because
“what is being punished, the failure to maintain the integrity of their office, is a transgression which is uniquely incumbent upon elected officials and which is best served by the establishment of “bright line” rules. Given the scope of authority and power bestowed upon them, there is little latitude for breaches of faith, particularly those which involve monetary matters. Responsibility for ethical violations is removed from the “legislature” (in this case the city council) and entrusted to the judiciary because an elected chamber may be unable or unwilling to render justice in the form of an appropriate sanction. In the worst case scenario, without the possibility of punishment meted out by the courts, a corrupt politician who enjoyed the support of a sufficient number of his or her fellow corrupt councillors could continue unimpeded and with impunity.”
Putting aside the specific of the Ford case, this is a good perspective to maintain in any number of situations. Time and time again, I’ve seen the argument that politicians (of all stripes) should basically be allowed to do whatever they want because they have the support of the electorate. But without rule of law, there is little line between democracy and mob rule. The whole column is well worth a read.
Some people have hobbies like woodworking or painting. Apparently, I do web design.
The very first post on this blog is from when it was hosted on Blogger and I outlined how I had hacked an existing theme to look like the minimalist Depo Skinny WordPress theme. Since then I’ve moved onto WordPress and installed that theme, modifying it along the way. It’s in these modifications that I’ve come to learn about html and css, the building blocks of web design. If I want to change a font or make a photo larger, I’ve had to figure out where that particular piece of code is and fix it to my liking. In this way, it’s like tinkering with a car: you may not build it, but the more you start taking it apart and modifying it, the closer you get to understanding the whole process.
This last iteration has been one of my most ambitious yet. In the past, I basically only cared about what my site looked like on a desktop computer running Firefox or Chrome. Safari was usually OK, but Internet Explorer had some bugs and it was not at all optimized for cellphones or tablets. For a while I was running a (still very good!) plug-in called WPTouch that makes sites readable on these smaller devices, but eliminates virtually all your design in the process. This didn’t make me very happy.
So over the last couple of weeks, I’ve learned all about the theory and the code behind responsive web design. Long story short, this makes your website adapt to the screen it’s being viewed on. Everything is measured in relative terms rather than absolutes so it remains proportional as the screen gets bigger and smaller, and certain elements move or disappear as the screen gets smaller to accommodate the most important parts. Doing this was made all the more challenging by my desire to have it work on Internet Explorer, which doesn’t obey normal commands like everyone else (this is why anyone involved in making stuff for the internet hates it, in case you were wondering).
Overall, I was still going for the same thing I’ve been working on from the start: a clean, minimalist design that’s easy to read and navigate. To this end I’m still using Depo Skinny as a basic building block, with the same stylistic modifications I made when I first moved to WordPress in 2010 such as a navbar at the top and the Flickr images at the bottom. I finished what I started this summer and completely eliminated share buttons (if you want to post this to Facebook or share it on Twitter, I’m sure you know how without me cluttering things up), and I got rid of a few sections in the header to be less distracting, sticking everything else under “etc”.
Then came the fun part: making it work everywhere. I won’t go into all the detail of that, but suffice it to say it took a lot of Googling, bookmarking key pages and finally using the awesome resource that is Stack Overflow. I couldn’t possibly link to everyone who helped me get here, but that’s what makes the internet awesome: you have a whole bunch of people writing a whole bunch of things and someone like me can pull something like this off.
I should say that in addition to the aforementioned Depo Skinny, I took a lot of design inspiration from Marco.org and the Svbtle network. It was these two sites that even made me aware there was such a thing as responsive web design: I noticed that the sites looked slightly different depending on the screen and wanted to figure out how to do that. If there was a measurement I wanted, I probably stole it from their source code, too. And the whole bit where my logo jumps to the center on a tiny screen is a straight-up taken from what happens on Svbtle blogs (it’s also the only thing that doesn’t happen on Internet Explorer, but I’ll live with that). Oh, and I even cleaned up my moose logo a little bit, to make it look somewhat nicer on larger screens.
Anyways, that’s enough about that. I hope you like the look, but more importantly I hope it continues to be a place that a small group of people like to come to read.
Screenshots for posterity:
fullscreen header & footer – everything floats in the middle, with 20% padding on the left and right
Photos resize as the screen gets smaller. Also, as the screen gets smaller the content takes up 80% of the space instead of just 60.
Photos must maintain a size of at least 150px, so they don’t get too tiny on a phone screen.
Speaking of phone screens, by this point the header has moved to the center of the screen and the footer is single column. Also, content now takes up 96% of the screen, with a 2% margin on either side.
I usually present my blog with just words and no photos. But it’s nice to add colour once in a while, so I’m going to try putting together a photo highlight post every once in a while, starting with this one.
I’m no photographer, but also suspect this will be a good way to share what I’ve been seeing and doing, and not just the big things I’ve been thinking about. Maybe add a bit more personality to this thing.
So here it is. If you want more, clicking on any of these photos brings you to my Flickr photo stream, which is part showcase, part photo-dump, so you’ve been warned.
In the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day, I’ve had two quotes rattling around in my head. The first is from comedian Louis CK in Live at the Beacon, the bit called “Soldier on a Plane”, when he talks about seeing, well, a soldier on a plane:
“This guy is giving his life for the country, he thinks, and so he has to sit– But that’s good enough. That’s good enough, the fact that he thinks it. He’s fucking told by everybody in his life system that that’s a great thing to do and he’s doing it. And it’s scary but he’s doing it. And he’s sitting in this shitty seat and I should trade with him.”
The second is from the Buffy Sainte Marie song “Universal Soldier“:
“And he’s fighting for democracy he’s fighting for the reds
He says it’s for the peace of all
He’s the one who must decide who’s to live and who’s to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall
But without him how would Hitler have condemned him at Le Val
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He’s the one who gives his body as the weapon of the war
And without him all this killing can’t go on”
In CK’s perspective, the soldiers who fight for the country should be celebrated regardless of whether you share the same point of view as them or not, because they believe they’re doing the right thing and are willing to lose their lives for it. In Sainte Marie’s version there’s a call for a little more personal responsibility. Leaders and countries may declare war, but ultimately it’s every soldier’s personal decision to go along with it. No soldiers, no war.
I’m sure both CK and Sainte Marie have more nuanced viewpoints than are represented by quotes from a comedy routine and a folk song that, combined, clock in at under six minutes. And I’m sure the men and women in uniform struggle with these questions more than I ever have. But they’re both things I’m thinking about today. The people who lay down their lives doing what they believe, and the question of what would happen if more people chose to just not fight when they were told to.
Last night was the the warm-up to Coldsnap show. Coldsnap is a winter music festival here in Prince George that I’m involved in organizing.
The kick-off accomplishes a few things: it gets all the volunteers (it’s an entirely volunteer-run festival) warmed up for over a week’s worth of shows in January, it lets us test new things and, with any luck, it builds up excitement for the shows in January so people start buying their tickets.
I’ve never done anything like this in other cities, but other people tell me that Prince George is a notoriously last-minute town when it comes to things like concerts. Sales will be at like 10% the day before the show and then the night of it sells out. It drives people who organize things like concerts and plays absolutely nuts. They’ve put all this time and effort into promoting something and up until the last minute they’re wondering what they could have done differently. Then it turns out they did everything just fine, people were just waiting to pick up their tickets at the door.
That’s why whenever there’s an early sell-out there’s a huge amount of relief. We found out we had hit sell-out level the night before the concert. So the day of the concert you can just focus on getting ready for the concert and NOT trying to drum up last-minute publicity when people already have their plans. And there’s always hope that the people who didn’t get tickets will take that as a prompt to buy tickets to other things they want to see a little earlier next time. Lots of people got turned away last night. So here’s hoping.
Last night was the most watched exercise in democracy in history.
Or not.
Because there is a certain segment of the population who are viewing last night’s results as somehow illegitimate or undemocratic. And of course there are no shortage of people congratulating America on making the right choice, implying that all the people who went the other way were wrong and had there been a few more of them, America as a whole would have made the wrong choice. That’s problematic.
The most important thing in creating a stable democracy isn’t that people get to choose a leader. The most important thing is that even the people whose choice didn’t win still feel like the results are legitimate. That political opponents could legitimately lead the country, if enough people supported them.
From that point of view, the most important part of an election isn’t the victory speech. It’s the concession. It’s the moment when the loser acknowledges the legitimacy of the winner to lead, and the legitimacy of the people and the system that made that happen.
I have a music radio show. It’s a weekly, one-hour broadcast on CFUR Radio and then podcast. I’ve been doing it inconsistently since 2010.
The premise is pretty simple: I play music that I’ve been listening to lately, and then I tell people what the songs are. That’s really it. Over the course of the first 39 episodes, these have been the changes:
In the two most recent episodes (40 and 41) the other shift I made was rather than stopping the music to talk, I choose longer instrumental portions to give a quick update. The result is I interject even less than I used to, so it’s basically straight music.
What I don’t know is whether this is the sort of thing that gets people to listen to a music radio show. I’m a pretty minimal presence. I don’t talk about news, the week, my life, and only rarely even mention upcoming concerts or album releases. I figure that would a) eat into time to listen to good music and b) date episodes and reduce their replay value.
But I also wonder if this eliminates any value-added to having a radio show, rather than just a mixtape. Do people prefer a “how about that weather?” “Here’s what I’ve been up to?” Do you want guests? Or is a mixtape enough, provided it’s actually curated by a person as opposed to an algorithm?
Some music radio shows that I listen to and a quick note on why I enjoy them:
I’d like to know your thoughts on this one. What music radio shows do you listen to? What works and what doesn’t? I’m starting a discussion on Branch and you can Tweet me to join, or just leave a comment below.
Today, men all over the world begin growing moustaches for Movember, to raise awareness of and money for men’s health such as prostate cancer.
Every year I don’t participate.
No particular reason why. There are charities and causes I support. There are even more I don’t. I’m guessing it’s the same for you. In fact, chances are incredibly high you don’t participate in at least a couple of the causes I do. And chances are even higher that I don’t participate in most of the causes you devote your time to.
This is because there are huge numbers of incredible causes out there. They are local, national, and international. They are devoted to disease research, mental health advocacy, animal welfare, ending child trafficking, providing access to services for sex trade workers, getting education to adult learners, and all sorts of things neither of us even knew were a problem but really, actually are.
I take no issue with Movember. I do take issue with it every time I get questions about why I’m not participating. Believe me: there is no grand philosophy behind my decision to not get people to pledge funds for me to grow a moustache every year. I just don’t. We all make decisions about what to support and participate in, and it’s not necessarily a judgement call where we are saying the things we don’t support or participate in are bad or unworthy of anyone’s time. They’re just not our causes, at this time, at this moment.
It’s awesome that so many people are doing so many things to get good stuff done. To those of you growing moustaches and raising money and awareness, awesome. Post your Facebook pics. Let us know when you are just short of your goal and would anyone want to help out. That’s fine. I don’t mind bottle drives coming to my house, either, even if I don’t always have anything for them. But I would mind if every time I told the kids at my door I didn’t have anything for them they went “why not?” That would suck. Can you imagine if every time you didn’t sign a form or put cash in a tin or buy a raffle ticket for a fundraiser you had to defend your decision as to why you didn’t like this cause?
And that’s what this post is about. If I was just ambivalent to Movember, or had no real feelings beyond “oh, that’s nice” like I do about most causes, I would leave it alone. The problem is I’ve hit a point where a tiny part of me has started to hate it. It’s because a certain amount of the messaging has turned Movember into something where you are apparently either in or out, for or against. And I don’t think that’s the way it should be. It’s for good, but it’s not the only good, and it’s not some special event that everyone must blanketly support at risk of being questioned about it.
I don’t like not liking a good cause. So I’m just putting this out there: please don’t question me for not growing a moustache, and I won’t question your motivations for every single cause and charity you don’t participate in. Good luck with your efforts. Have a good month.
Over the past three days, we have seen North America buffeted by nature on both coasts: an earthquake near Haida Gwaii, and Sandy up against New York, Toronto, and the east.
Sandy was expected. Government and media were preparing for it days in advance. The earthquake, not so much. I found out it had happened via text message, and confirmed it on Facebook and Twitter, through first-hand accounts of “whoa, anyone else feel that?” followed by direct links to quake measurement sites. Though TV and radio coverage was thrown together pretty darn fast for a Saturday night, Twitter was leading the show. In this sense, it was reminiscent of both the Vancouver hockey riots and the Prince George mill explosion- people sharing photos, video and first-hand accounts in conjunction with mainstream media acting as aggregators and conduits for official channels (government, emergency response) to communicate through.
But on Saturday night, not all the information being shared was accurate. As soon as I saw Tweets warning about tsunami waves, I jumped onto Google to try to find a sourced news report sharing the same information. The first result from “Haida Gwaii tsunami” was a 2011 CBC news article titled “B.C. tsunami threat passes.” Unfortunately, not everyone noticed the date below that title. And they started tweeting that headline as fact, contradicting those warning it was time to get higher ground. The main difference, if you were just skimming through your Twitter feed, is that the tsunami warnings didn’t have a source. The tsunami warning passing posts did. And they were right, if you were worried about a tsunami threat from a year-and-a-half ago.
WHOOPS!! @b9bomber: @acoyne Dude, that article is from Mar. 11, 2011.
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) October 28, 2012
Almost as soon as those “tsunami threat passes” tweets went out there, new ones were fired off by people pointing out the error. And then people corrected them. But the storm of retweets had already started, to the point that it was over an hour before I saw the last faulty tweet sent and, shortly thereafter, rescinded. It didn’t seem to cause major problems, but if anyone had seen that faulty tweet, assumed it to be true and gone back to bed only to have a worse tsunami hit them, it could have. I know that comes off as alarmist, but bear with me.
This faulty retweet shows two sides of a coin. One the one hand, Twitter put the accurate information out there faster than traditional media. On the other, it put out inaccurate information because it didn’t have the checks and balances of traditional media. That’s the trade-off. As much as traditional media is working to close that gap, there will always be a delay while they verify their facts. It’s not foolproof by any means, but it does generally avoid the mistake of telling people the tsunami threat is over when it isn’t. Or posting photos of Hurricane Sandy that aren’t of Hurricane Sandy.
This is not a lament about the inaccuracy of the crowd and a cry to heed the words of trained reporters above all others. For one, I saw multiple media people share that inaccurate tweet, and many more “civilians” sending out the correct information. For another, I am a firm believer in the value of letting everyone have a voice- on the whole, Twitter was a huge asset to me, speaking as both a spectator and someone who was armchair reporting (the real reporting was left to my colleagues in Prince Rupert and Vancouver, who did an excellent job).
What this is, I think, is a question: In a world where everyone has access to the same publishing tools as government and journalists, what skills do we now have to make part of our basic education system? A lot has been made of the need to teach children about the dangers of the internet, the importance of privacy, the permanence of status updates. But what about the need to verify sources? To check statements before sending them off as facts? To double-check the date on that news story you’re linking to? In other words, the basic tools of journalism?
Every time something like this happens, the line between the media and the audience is erased a little bit more. The next step is figuring out how we maximize the good parts of rapid information sharing while minimizing the bad.
This afternoon I made a post called “Council and China” where I wrote about Mayor Shari Green’s proposal to spend $35,000 on a four-person trip to China. From it:
So it will be interesting to see how Green justifies the cost of a foreign relations trip while the core services review has the city actively talking about privatizing or contracting out control of things like the Four Seasons Swimming Pool and the Civic Centre, to say nothing of the recent elimination of the city’s entire environment division and 28 jobs.
Well, now we know. Just now Mayor Green, along with councillors Dave Wilbur, Lyn Hall, Cameron Stolz, Albert Koehler, and Murry Krause voted in favour of the trip and the money. Garth Frizzell and Brian Skakun opposed the spending (Frizzell supported the trip, however), and Frank Everitt was away.
Before we get further in, I’d like to once again point out that $12,000 of this comes from a provincial government grant aimed at exactly this sort of thing, money that could not otherwise be used for things like road repair or swimming pools. The remaining (up to) $23,000 comes from the 2012 economic development fund.
I’ve posted the full audio below, but here are what I took to be some key points from everyone who chose to speak on the subject.
Dave Wilbur:
“I’ve spoken often and passionately about the opportunity it [the airport] has of creating good paying jobs for our future… our sons and daughters and their children… I think it’s important we keep the relationship as a key point as we go forward…
“But I want to make certain that people appreciate that this is not a short-term gain. It’s a long road, and it’s the medium and long-term gain for this community that I think is most important.”
Cameron Stolz:
“One of the things I’ve come to appreciate is that in China things move slowly… there’s a process that things go through and in China it’s very much about building the relationship… they really mean longer term, as in generational. So if they’re going to build on that they want to have a relationship with the organization and for them the organization is the mayor of the cities they’re involved with. It’s all about the mayor and the elected officials as opposed to any business owner inside of that city.
“International students are a huge economic driver and opportunity for our community. Each students pays the university or the college $22,000 a year to participate there, approximately. And on top of that, according to the university or college, they pay about that much again in the community.
“If you look at our number of international students… and compare it with.. Kamloops… [they] have three time the number of international students Prince George has… and they have a huge economic advantage…”
“And that’s just one small piece.”
Brian Skakun:
“To me it’s about optics. I know we have to keep looking after our economic interests but the timing is wrong, in my opinion.
“We’re going through a core review right now, we have people worried about getting adequate firefighter protection, we have city workers worried about getting laid off, we have non-profits and charities worried about getting their tax grants reduced, and I just think the timing couldn’t be any worse.
“We’re going through one of the most challenging times since I’ve been on council and this is my tenth year… The timing is wrong and I won’t support it.”
Lynn Hall:
“I think it’s important to point out that throughout China, throughout South America, School District 57, UNBC and CNC are highly regarded. It’s quite amazing that we, in fact, are one of three communities in Canada that are considered by these locations to send their students. So this is a huge opportunity and I think as Councillor Stolz has said we haven’t tapped into that as well as we should have.”
Shari Green:
“I don’t think there’s ever a great time, there’s always a challenge, we’ve certainly got some budget issues in front of us… but that’s one of the reasons we’re in the bind that we’re in economically and in our fiscal situation is because this community hasn’t grown and we need to diversify our economy and find other opportunites to bring other revenue into this community whatever that may be, and that needs to continue regardless of what’s going on inside the building.
“And so from my perspective this is an important piece of work, it’s taken years to get it to the stage it’s at, it moves very slowly, and it’s going to move a little bit further ahead now.
“Until you have the government-to-government solid relationship in place, none of the business things come along.”
Garth Frizzell (in opposing using the city funds for the trip):
“A couple months ago we asked for some information back on whether there was any funds available for the PGX, and we got the news back that there wasn’t any funds available for that, so the reason that I voted against it is I don’t think that money is available or exists.”
Stolz (replying to Frizzell as chair of finance and audit):
“Councillor Frizzell may recall that in February council voted unanimously to reduce our contingency fund for council and redirect that towards an economic development fund… Those funds were reserved strictly for the use of economic development.”
Here’s the full audio of the votes:
[audio:http://f.cl.ly/items/1B1L2y090W12123B1V2w/pgcouncilchina.mp3]
Here’s a copy of the mayor’s request:
Mayor Jiangmen
I really haven’t been posting much on Prince George city council lately, but this is worth sharing. As reported by Opinion250, at tonight’s meeting mayor Shari Green is going to be asking council to approve up to $35 thousand dollars for a four person delegation consisting of herself, two councillors and one staff person to go Prince George’s sister city in China.
As pointed out by the union representing city workers and Ben Meisner of 250, the timing of this may not be ideal from a public relations standpoint. It’s right in the middle of a core services review process aimed at saving the city money, a key plank in Green’s election campaign that’s supposed to see the city cut back and start saving money.
So it will be interesting to see how Green justifies the cost of a foreign relations trip while the core services review has the city actively talking about privatizing or contracting out control of things like the Four Seasons Swimming Pool and the Civic Centre, to say nothing of the recent elimination of the city’s entire environment division and 28 jobs.
Of note:
The meeting streams online starting at 6:00 tonight. Watch it here (or in person at city hall).
Update: Off they go.
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December 3 2012 | ∞
Short version: this photo is fake and I didn’t think anyone would believe it and I’m sorry if you did.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
Earlier today, I was killing some time while waiting for the brakes on my bike to be repaired. I went online, and saw another one of those “I won the Powerball” hoaxes. If you aren’t familiar, here’s the Snopes entry on both of them.
So, for no reason other than I thought it would be funny, I downloaded both images. Then I found an old photo of me holding something. Then I opened Microsoft Paint and did one of the worst jobs of combining all three photos that I possibly could. Seriously. Look at the hands. Look at my shirt. Look at the wall in the back right corner. I used the rectangle tool and spray paint, and didn’t even do a good job of that. Then I uploaded the photo and combined the statuses of both of the other messages to write “Looks like I won’t be going to work EVER!!!! Share this photo and I will give a random person 1 million dollars! and yes, I am one of the winner of 580$ Million PowerBall 🙂 I will pick 10 random people to get 1 Million $ each if you share this! I care for others too! :)” It doesn’t even make sense.
I can honestly say that I didn’t think anyone would believe it. Aside from the terrible image, there’s the fact that the Powerball has long-since been claimed. Even if you didn’t know the first two were fakes, surely you would think a third– with two winners and with text identical to previous viral pictures– would be. Plus I’m in Canada. Plus- those hands. I’m not saying this to try to belittle anyone who was taken in. I’m saying this to try and explain why I didn’t foresee a future where people would believe it. I figured a few of my friends would maybe get a laugh and give it a like and that would be that.
Four hours later I’m looking at 200 shares (and growing by the minute), a few messages, and a couple of friend requests. A good portion of these are people who get the joke. A few are people who realize it’s fake, but don’t know that I figured everyone would think it was fake. And, unfortunately, a growing number of people seem to think it’s real. So I’m going to write this and attach it to the original picture before it gets too far. But first, some observations:
On the internet, context is everything
The thing I didn’t anticipate about this is what would happen once the photo got shared and people who didn’t know me started to see it. Here’s the thing: if you know me, you know I didn’t win. You know I don’t write phrases like “I am one of the winner of 580$ Million PowerBall” and I definitely don’t punctuate it with emoticons. So you see that and you immediately get the joke.
But what happens when you don’t know me? One or two people deep, you might still get the joke. But as you get further removed from me, you lose all the context for who I am and my previous actions and my writing style and are only presented with the image of a stranger and the text. One person deep, it’s a joke. Three degrees out, and I’m some jerk playing a hoax.
In fact, looking at it I can easily see where the original prankster may have been doing the same thing: quick photoshop and a share, just for a laugh, thinking no one would believe it, and if any of his friends did, it would easily be corrected. And then it spirals. (I have no idea if this happened, but I could see that happening). I’ve been looking at the second prankster’s Facebook and Twitter feeds and I’m pretty sure he was just playing on the original. Granted, he seems to be using it for internet fame, but it really does look like he made it fake-on-purpose, and yet people still took it to be real.
The irony of this is that the further removed this photo is from the original source, the more realistic it seems. If I were to email people directly saying this, most would go “fake!” But if the email comes from a friend or acquaintance… suddenly it seems more plausible, because presumably it passed their BS filters first.
There is nothing everyone knows
A while back I listened to a fascinating piece on those Nigerian prince scams— the ones that promise you untold riches if only you share your bank account number with a random stranger using broken English. It’s one of those things that you think everyone would be onto by now, yet is still out there. Why? Because:
So even though I’m aware of the Powerball winners, and the hoax, and how to see bad Photoshop… there’s always going to be someone who isn’t. It’s Eternal September online.
People are really nice
The worst thing about this is that the people who take these scams to be true seem to be genuinely awesome people. The inclination from many corners is to disparage them for being so easily taken, but really these are just people who haven’t developed a cynical view of humanity and take statements at their word. If they were a bunch of jerky jerkfaces then I might be mad that they are out there. But as it is, they are just nice people saying “good for you” and “how nice” and they probably donate money to charity and help with fundraisers and ask you how your family is. And I don’t want these people to not exist. I want their to be more of them. But what I don’t want is for them to be taken in by a scam that is more than just a joke photo. All the time you hear about people giving out credit card numbers to scammers and you think “Why would they fall for that?” and the reason is because they believe in people. And while I want them to maybe get a little bit more savvy about how to tell the real from the fake, I don’t want them to lose that inclination to believe in the good. I want to have that inclination myself.
So anyways, that’s why I’m posting this and I’m hoping the basic message of “be careful” spreads as much as the hoaxes have.
Filed under: social media | Discussion