The Corrosiveness of Fake Harassment Stories

fakestoryYou might have seen this story going around social media, about a harassment incident ending up with her being handcuffed by University of Minnesota police.  Thinking about sharing it?  Don’t.  The University of Minnesota police answered questions about this supposed incident by saying they never responded to the incident described.

It’s hard to know what Kathy Mirah Tu (if that is her real name) was thinking.  If she thought that faking this story would somehow help against the worst of Trump’s supporters, all this story and others do is destroy the credibility of people reporting real Trump inspired harassment or force them to document it.  Some sites are using her story as to declare that there is no Trump inspired hate wave,  questioning the reputations of sites like the one Joz talked about.  Then again, that might have been her (or whoever is pretending to be her) intent all along.

An interesting side note to this story is false stories like this, aimed at both liberal and conservative Americans, are often carried on click bait web servers in Eastern Europe.  Kathy Mirah Tu has since deleted her facebook account that originally carried the story.

(h/t: jl and hl)

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About Jeff

Jeff lives in Silicon Valley, and attempts to juggle marriage, fatherhood, computer systems research, running, and writing.
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