"My Father, the hero" (Debunked)

[Stofsk]

Let me just say, without meaning to sound like a prat, but the original story that got told here - the one about the hero father talking down those goons from the security service who came for her - was pretty difficult to believe, both then and in retrospect. I admit I was taken in by it too, so I feel like an idiot, and I can only imagine the level of betrayal the LGBT community feels at the moment, but I have to admit even then I thought it sounded like a good story. So good that I wanted to believe it, and just ignored the quiet voice that said 'this sounds made up'.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this development is pretty shit and the guy's a turd, but... I'm not surprised it was all fake.

[Duckie]

I imagine you would be less 'oh I expected that' if you were one of those people who have known her for years before she posted that. Maybe as a single post it seems unbelievable, and it was where Syrians started to express their doubt, but to those people who have known her that long where she never before had done anything suspicious (and wouldn't for another month or so)? You can see why they didn't have any doubts until very recently with the revelation of the fake pictures and other information that the media didn't bother to report halfway between there and here.

[Stofsk]

Yeah, I take your point. It's pretty flabbergasting how extensive this deception was, how long it went for, and ultimately how many people it hurt.

[Duckie]

To put it this way as to how little I can believe this, I'm still wishing I could see a way that maybe this guy works for Syrian intelligence or something and is trying to throw us off. But I have a rule sort of like that one about Hitler: If you ever have to make unsupported claims about the motives of (Israeli/Syrian/US/etc. Intelligence Organisations), you lose. Because that's never the case in real life.

It just doesn't make sense. Before this I was 90% sure I knew who the real Amina was. I knew that she was a fake pretty early on and I accepted it better than some of the people closer to her. But I was sure I had an idea of what motivated her, of why she had done what she had done, and a motivation that I could sympathise with. I was relatively sure she was a lesbian, and thought she was an Arab-American. I won't talk more about it since it's irrelevant.

Why this condescending asshole instead? Thanks a lot, universe. That's what you get for believing in people.

[MarshalPurnell]

If anyone remembers Salman Pax, I had expected the truth to be something of the same. A gay Arab blogger exaggerating experiences and being protected from harassment over sexual orientation by the ties of her family to the ruling party. The original story about the secret police being sent away was only somewhat credible, and made a lot more sense if her father had connections he could call on. It is possible some of the lowest level flunkies sent out on a boringly routine, low priority mission to round someone up at their house might fall back and ask for further orders if someone important defies them. Arab functionaries are not known for taking initiative and dodging responsibility for making a potentially awkward decision is pretty common in all bureaucracies, even those that torture people. But once that was cleared up, a reckoning would be certain.

The truth is surprising. Even though "hoax" was certain as soon as the issue with the photos was confirmed I was expecting the writer would have a background that included at least some elements of blogger persona. MacMasters was rather successful in creating a character, and to give him due credit he seems to have woven a very convincing narrative with a taut plot. Obviously his "Amina" rang true to a great many people who shared important parts of her background. This would make for a very successful work of fiction. Alas, he neglected to inform readers that his blog was a work of fiction, leading people to invest rather more emotional attachment to it than was called for and to credit it as a firsthand account in a real news story. In essence then he is no different from all the other Internet trolls hiding behind false personas to deceive people for their own amusement, he just did so on a much bigger scale. I can believe whatever damage he caused was unintentional but his note also makes it clear he was too self-absorbed to even consider the ramifications of his actions or to care about the distress they inflicted.

For that obvious character flaws and his blindness to it he deserves to be treated with contempt. For passing off a work of fiction as the truth he deserves to be known as deceitful and untrustworthy. With the media attention the case has garnished I have little difficulty believing that he will experience much-earned consequences from this.

[Duckie]

He "neglected to inform people it was a work of fiction"? Try "dated a woman for a long term relationship under false pretenses, pretending to be the woman of her dreams, then made her think she was dead or captured by the syrians".

That goes beyond the pale of any sort of 'fiction'. Why the hell would someone do that?

If it weren't against the rules of this board I'd have much more to say on the matter.

[Beowulf]

As a devil's advocate:

He did indicate on the blog that entries may be a work of fiction. It was misleading (in that the entire thing was a work of fiction), but accurate.

[Duckie]

As a devil's advocate:

He did indicate on the blog that entries may be a work of fiction. It was misleading (in that the entire thing was a work of fiction), but accurate.

Fuck off on that nonsense

He said that years ago in a blog no one read. And I'll be damned if that clears him for what he did. Did you miss the part where I said he DATED a woman? That they, she thought, fell in love? That amina wrote this girl poetry, beautiful fucking poetry expressing her love? Did you miss the part where he toyed with this woman?

There is no fucking work of fiction that dates a woman under false pretenses. That is absolute bullshit. Don't open your mouth from a distance when you don't know a damned thing about this case.

[Edward Yee]

Hmm...

I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.

This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.

Shades of blaming the victims/audience for reacting negatively to the deception?

I do recall someone earlier remarking that something smelly fishy about the "my father the hero" story simply because of the idea of regime goons actually being able to be deterred with words... as opposed to just busting up the place and making off with the father too. (I suppose it reminds me of the idea of nonviolent resistance only being effective in certain cultures and not others... kind of like the White Rose in WWII Nazi Germany.)

[hongi]

Disappointed. Not particularly hurt, I'm glad that Amina Abdallah doesn't exist and she's not holed up in some prison somewhere, or even worse dead. But disappointed that he's lied, drawn press and international coverage to a lie and not the real pain that Syrians are undergoing.

[K. A. Pital]

Lying is bad. Remember "boy who cried wolf".

He did indicate on the blog that entries may be a work of fiction.

He's a fucking idiot. I know its wrong, but maybe he really deserves to be in Syria. Not in Turkey. In a karma police sort of way.

[MarshalPurnell]

He "neglected to inform people it was a work of fiction"? Try "dated a woman for a long term relationship under false pretenses, pretending to be the woman of her dreams, then made her think she was dead or captured by the syrians".

That goes beyond the pale of any sort of 'fiction'. Why the hell would someone do that?

If it weren't against the rules of this board I'd have much more to say on the matter.

I wasn't aware there was any girlfriend outside the pages of the blog. Certainly it didn't appear in any of the mainstream publications, save the dating profile for an Arab-American woman in Georgia. Once this broke I assumed it was probably not related to the blog after all. Obviously that inflicts a rather serious, concrete damage instead of the more diffuse and abstract wrongs caused by duping an audience.

[Duckie]

Mainstream publications? Every single news story reported the girlfriend being confused and distraught upon realising her girlfriend was a hoax. Uh, for starters, NPR, CNN, the Guardian...

Maybe not in the latest articles? I don't know. I guess that's not really newsworthy compared to the media patting itself on the back for solving it (especially when it was solved by lesbian bloggers, palestinian militants (no joke!) and the internet and not really them).

[FSTargetDrone]

One of my biggest problems with this is that he used the photo of a woman plucked from her Facebook account without her knowledge or permission. How he thought this was ever a good idea is beyond me. Inventing a persona like this is dodgy enough, but he involved someone else who had no say in it.

In any case, the author of this little fiction has finally updated the name of the blog:

A Hoax

A Hoax that got way out of hand. I never meant to hurt anyone

And the lastest post:

13 June 2011
Apology to readers
Statement Regarding the Gay Girl in Damascus Blog

Tom MacMaster

Istanbul, June 13, 2011


I am the sole author of this blog and have always been so. Any and all posts on the blog are by me.

Before I say anything else, I want to apologize to anyone I may have hurt or harmed in any way. I never meant to hurt anyone. I am really truly sorry and I feel awful about this. Words alone do not suffice to express how badly I feel about all this. I betrayed the trust of a great many people, the friendship that was honestly and openly offered to me, and played with the emotions of others unfairly. I have distracted the world’s attention from important issues of real people in real places. I have potentially compromised the safety of real people. I have helped lend credence to the lies of the regimes. I am sorry.

I have hurt people with whom I share a side and a struggle. That matters. I have hurt causes I believe in sincerely. That is wrong.

It started innocently enough without any intention whatsoever of creating a massive hoax or duping the world. Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to write fiction but, when my first attempts met with universal rejection, I took a more serious look at my own work and I realized that I could not write conversation in a natural way nor could I convincingly write characters who weren’t me. I tried to get better and did various exercises (such as simply copying overheard conversations). Eventually, I would set up a number of profiles on dating sites with identities that were not my own as ways of interacting with real people in conversation but with a different personality than my own.

I was also very involved in issues surrounding the Palestine and Iraq struggles. Ever since my childhood I had felt very connected to the cultures and peoples of the Middle East. It’s something that I came by naturally. My mother had taught English in Turkey before I was born and my father had been involved with Middle East refugee issues when they met. They are both people whom I admire immensely and have continued to do many wonderful works that I can only aspire to.

I’m also an argumentative sort and a bit of a nerd. I was involved with numerous online science-fiction/alternate-history discussion lists and, as a part of that process, I saw lots of incredibly ignorant and stupid positions repeated on the Middle East. I noticed that when I, a person with a distinctly Anglo name, made comments on the Middle East, the facts I might present were ignored and I found myself accused of hating America, Jews, etc. I wondered idly whether the same ideas presented by someone with a distinctly Arab and female identity would have the same reaction.

So, I invented her. First, she was just a name. Amina Arraf. She commented on blogs and talkbacks on news-sites. Eventually, I set up an email for her. She joined the same lists I was already on and posted responses in her name. And, almost immediately, friendly and solicitous comments on mine appeared. It was intriguing. That likely would have been the end of it; I’d just keep her as a nearly anonymous handle for commenting on issues that mattered to me but …

Amina came alive. I could hear her ‘voice’ and that voice and personality were clear and strong. Amina was funny and smart and equal parts infuriating and flirtatious. She struggled with her religious beliefs and sexuality, wondered about living in America as an Arab; she wanted to find a way to balance her religion and her sexuality, her desire to be both a patriotic American and a patriotic Arab. Amina was clever and fun and had a story and a voice and I started writing it, almost as though she were dictating to me. Some of her details were mine, some were those of a dozen other friends borrowed liberally, others were purely ‘her’ from the get go.

And I did something really, really stupid at that point. I should have left the original ‘brief experiment in nerd psychology’ go and, if I continued to ‘hear’ the Amina voice, I should just use it in a novel.

I didn’t. Instead, I enjoyed ‘puppeting’ this woman who never was. I knew what she looked like in my head and I grabbed photos of a woman whom I have never met who looked exactly like what Amina should look like. That was stupid and possibly evil of me and I’m really, really sorry about that. I gave Amina a facebook page; she soon had friends and admirers.

Amina kept growing. And I kept trying to ‘kill’ her. Her story was great; I can easily write in Amina’s voice because I know her like she was a real person. I know what she likes and what she dislikes, how she feels and what makes her angry or elates her.

It was a terrible time suck but it was fun. And, regularly, I tried to stop. Amina moved overseas, she dropped out of sight repeatedly and so on and so forth. I meant to stop her … but is was hard. I’d read news stories and I’d find myself fighting the urge to respond as Amina … and occasionally giving in.

I wasn’t trying to pick fights or stir up controversy … I was instead trying to enlighten people. I posted comments on a blog; the owner asked me to contribute columns. I did so. I set up a blog to publish some of the things I’d written as Amina and, maybe, get a few comments. I did not expect anyone to read it or to care if they did.

And in the first month and more it was up, it received only a few visits. That was more than I had expected. Then, I wrote a perfect little story about the situation in Syria and the mutual affection between father and daughter … and to my shock, it went viral ….

And everything spiraled out of control. I couldn’t think of how to shut Amina down but …. It just kept on growing …

And now, I have ended it. She is me. She never really existed. I feel like I am in some ways the worst person in the world. I’ve hurt a lot of people, including people who thought of ‘me’, when I was her, as a good friend. I want to apologize clearly and explicitly and personally to Jelena Lecic, Paula Brooks, Sandra Bagaria and Scott Palter. Each of them, in very different ways, was hurt deeply by me and each of them will get a personal apology from me. Each of them is more than entitled to hit me.

I didn’t mean to hurt them.

I didn’t mean to harm anyone who is upset. I didn’t mean to hurt the causes which I myself believe in. I didn’t mean to malign anyone. My intentions were good; I got carried away. I owe apologies to those I hurt and will do all in my power to make things right. I only wanted to set forth real information through the use of artfully crafted fiction. I was too successful and I was too caught up in what I was doing. I ignored the consequences of my action.

I am sorry.

I want to turn the focus away from me and urge everyone to concentrate on the real issues, the real heroes, the real people struggling to bring freedom to the Arab world. I have only distracted from real people and real problems. Those continue; please focus on them.

[NecronLord]

Ack. Forgot to declare that I amended this thread title earlier. Busy day...