One man’s hard lesson after the Eiffel Tower’s darkness was mistaken for a moving tribute
By David Weigel
November 15, 2015 at 3:29 PM
On the night of the Paris attacks, Rurik Bradbury noticed an inevitable and tiresome trend popping up on Twitter. “I think I saw a professional news organization tweet about the lights of the Eiffel Tower being turned off in memory of the victims,” recalled Bradbury, the New York-based CMO of a software company. In the fog of war, and in the pursuit of virality, someone had mistaken the Eiffel Tower’s ordinary 1 a.m. darkness for a moving tribute.
Bradbury fired up the Twitter account of his alter ego, @ProfJeffJarvis. He used the well-known parody account, which makes fun of tech jargon and media “thinkfluencers,” to write a deadpan tweet about the icon of Paris going dark.
It was a perfect imitation of the serious tone and hastily assembled expertise that was filling Twitter all night. And it became Bradbury/ProfJeff’s most popular tweet by many orders of magnitude. By Sunday, nearly 30,000 people had retweeted his utterly fake news, which he’d written to prove that people will fall for anything.
“In general I am fascinated by the way history and fake history spreads on Twitter, such as the many ‘History in Pics’ type accounts, and the very low bar for spreading a viral meme through a credulous public,” said Bradbury in an interview.
But this was something else. Several actual news organizations retweeted ProfJeffJarvis, even though the item was “prima facie absurd,” and the source’s avatar was an old man wearing a beer-funnel baseball cap, with a bio that labeled him a “hyperglocal thinkfluencer” who had co-founded the “Mogadishu:REinvent unconference.” He hadn’t even tweaked his Halloween Twitter handle, “Scary PJJ 2016.” He was trusted even though he begged people not to trust him.
“It should be obvious, with a pause for thought, that the lights haven’t been on continuously since 1889: that scale of lighting would not have been viable in the late 1800s (the lighting was only installed in 1925); there were two world wars in between; it would be hugely expensive to leave the lights on continuously (as one French person pointed out); there have been many tragedies since then that would justify turning off the lights in mourning, such as the Charlie Hebdo murders as recently as January this year, and so on.”
Yet Bradbury’s timeline transformed into a cascade of “I can’t believe this” and “actually you’re wrong.” He made the best of it:
And as he did so, more fake stories mushroomed across social media. “A number of legitimate news organizations posted the footage of the Eiffel Tower lights going off from January in memory of the Charlie Hebdo victims, but labeled the footage as November 13,” noted Bradbury.
In an e-mail, Bradbury explained why the rapid sharing of anything vaguely inspiration-shaped after a tragedy was so unsettling to him.
The social media reaction to a tragedy is a spaghetti mess of many strands, some OK but most of them useless. There are positive elements (in intention, at least), such as the #porteouverte hashtag and the Facebook “Safety Check” in Paris -- though it remains to be seen how many people actually gained from these, either finding a place to stay or letting relatives know they were OK. (Also, it does trouble me that Facebook scored a PR win from Paris, furthering its agenda of becoming the de facto social identity of all humans, then monetizing this monopoly: if the Safety Check becomes a default state of affairs, is Facebook then responsible in some way for emergency responses; what are the implications when someone doesn’t post their safety status on Facebook and so on)
But the part that feels the most useless to me is people’s vicarious participation in the event, which on the ground is a horrible tragedy, but in cyberspace is flattened to a meme like any other. Millions of people with no connection to Paris or the victims mindlessly throw in their two cents: performative signaling purely for their own selfish benefit, spreading information that is often false and which they have not vetted at all, simply for the sake of making noise. If people wanted to be helpful, they would either be silent, or they would put in some — even minimal — effort to be thoughtful. First, they could spread useful and vetted information. And second, they could throw support behind a viewpoint they believe in, such as speaking out against politicians using the attacks to demonize Muslims or migrants, which is exactly what the murderers responsible for the Paris attacks want to provoke.
Instead of silence or helpfulness, social media pukes out stupidity, virtue-signaling and vicarious “enjoyment” (in a psychoanalytic sense) of a terrible tragedy by people thousands of miles away, for whom the event is just a meme they will participate in for a couple of days, then let fade into their timeline.
Crawling out from under the traffic, Bradbury managed to retweet someone who got that – and got the joke.
President Obama and French President Francois Hollande pay their respects at the Bataclan concert hall, one of the attack sites. (Philippe Wojazer/AP)In the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris, French soldiers patrol sparsely populated tourist sights such as the Louvre Museum. Officials say tourism has plummeted in some museums by up to half, but analysts say that it is only a temporary trend. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)Few tourists participate in a riverboat cruise on the Seine. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)People sing the French national anthem on the Place de la Republique in Paris. (Etienne Laurent/European Pressphoto Agency)A vigil in front of a memorial at the Capitole in Toulouse, France. (Guillaume Horcajuelo/European Pressphoto Agency)A woman lights a candle during a vigil in Toulouse. (Guillaume Horcajuelo/European Pressphoto Agency)Pictures of victims at a makeshift memorial outside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. (Peter Dejong/AP)Jean-Marie de Peretti mourns the loss of his daughter Aurlie, 33, one of the victims of the attack on the Bataclan concert hall. (Peter Dejong/AP)People hold placards reading United with the French people against integrism at a memorial outside the Bataclan concert hall. (Adrien Morlent/AFP/Getty Images)Flowers rest in a hole left by bullets in the attack on Le Carillon restaurant in Paris. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)A cafe attacked by a hail of bullets draws a crowd of mourners and bouquets three days after the assault. (Laurence Geai/For The Washington Post)Mourners observe a moment of silence in front of Le Carillon, a Parisian cafe that was attacked last week. (Laurence Geai/For The Washington Post)People hold hands in Lyon, France, during a minute of silence a moment that was observed across the grieving nation Monday. (Laurent Cipriani/AP)A French flag is nestled among the flowers left in front of the Bataclan concert hall in memory of the people who died there last week. (David Ramos/Getty Images)From left, French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, French President Franois Hollande and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stand among students during a minute of silence at Sorbonne University in Paris. (Pool/Reuters)Residents walk by the apartment building in a northern suburb in Paris where police raided the home of Samy Amimour, who blew himself up at the Bataclan music hall Friday night. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)A soldier patrols at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. (Peter Dejong/AP)French soldiers patrol in front of Sacr Coeur basilica in Paris. (Yoan Valat/European Pressphoto Agency)A man is detained by a police officer after a raid in the Mirail district in Toulouse in southwestern France. (AP)In Marseille, France, a crowd gathers around candles that were arranged to spell out the French word for peace in the old harbor area. (Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images)Flowers, candles and other tokens accumulate in front of the Bataclan music hall in Paris. (Laurence Geai/For The Washington Post)Pedestrians pause in front of the Bataclan music hall, where at least 89 people were killed Friday. (Laurence Geai/For The Washington Post)Authorities walk along a building in Strasbourg, France. By late Monday, French and Belgian officials investigating the Paris attacks had conducted more than 160 raids. (Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images)The Eiffel Tower is illuminated with the colors of the French flag to pay tribute to Pariss victims. The attraction, which closed in the wake of Fridays attacks, reopened to the public Monday. (Charles Platiau/Reuters)French soldiers patrol the Eiffel Tower, which remained closed on the first of three days of national mourning in Paris. Thousands of French troops deployed around Paris on Sunday, and tourist sites were shuttered. (Peter Dejong/AP)A soldier patrols in front of Notre Dame. (Christophe Ena/AP)People mourn in front of a memorial near the Bataclan concert venue in Paris. (Julien Warnand/European Pressphoto Agency)People gather at the site of the attacks on restaurant Le Petit Cambodge and the Carillon Hotel. (Laurence Geai/for The Washington Post)People lay flowers and candles in front of the Petit Cambodge restaurant in Paris. (Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency)People gather in front of the cafe La Bonne Biere, in central Paris. (Laurence Geai/for The Washington Post)People pay their respects at Le Carillon restaurant, one of the attack sites in Paris. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)Roses are placed in the bullet holes in the terrace window of Le Carillon restaurant in Paris. (Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency)Broken glass is strewn across the floor inside the restaurant on Rue de Charonne in Paris where the attacks took place Friday. (Frank Augstein/AP)People at the makeshift memorial at the Bataclan concert venue. (Virginie Nguyen Hoang/for The Washington Post)A woman reacts at a makeshift memorial near the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)A delegation of clerics led by imam Hassen Chalghoumi, president of the Conference of Imams of France, gather in front of the Bataclan concert venue. They were joined by writer Marek Halter and rabbis from Paris. (Virginie Nguyen Hoang/for The Washington Post)Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy leaves the Elysee Palace after a meeting with France's current president, Franois Hollande, right. Hollande vowed to attack the Islamic State group without mercy. (Jacques Brinon/AP)An armed French police officer stands guard at the border between France and Italy as law enforcement checks vehicles and verifies the identities of travelers in Menton, France. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters)Young people gesture for peace at Place de la Republique in Paris. (Virginie Nguyen Hoang/for The Washington Post)French police in full bulletproof gear return after a false alert that sent hundreds running off the Place de la Republique in Paris. (Jerome Delay/AP)A man carries two children after panic broke out among mourners who paid their respects at the attack sites at restaurant Le Petit Cambodge and the Carillon Hotel in Paris. (Peter Dejong/AP)Police react to a suspicious vehicle near La Carillon restaurant. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)A man watches fire trucks drive around Paris in the evening. A hoax created an atmosphere of panic inside Paris at Place de la Republique. (Virginie Nguyen Hoang/for The Washington Post)Thousands of people wait for a Mass at Notre Dame cathedral. (Virginie Nguyen Hoang/for The Washington Post)A bird flies in front of the Eiffel Tower, which remained closed in Paris. (Daniel Ochoa De Olza/AP)
Photo Gallery: The scene in France after bloody rampage stuns Paris