We all had a friend's friend with a hot blonde 'online friend' and well, needless to say that more often than not that hot blonde turned out to be a some dude with a bear gut and too much of free time. However, the latest 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' has an uglier side, as its creator did not dupe just one or two people, but the entire blog community. Not only that, it also endangered the sovereignty of a nation.
It all started with Amina Arraf, a Syrian-American woman, who claimed to be gay. The blog was started in February this year and soon had an enviable fan-following, which was not exactly a surprise. After all, it had all the ingredients of a pot-boiler, a young fiesty woman from a 'repressed' society which does not accept her sexuality, juicy tit-bits about a culture which we do not know much about and the general drama.
The blog contained the 'truth' about the ground situation in Syria and things were going pretty well, until Amina's cousin Rania Ismail appeared on the scene and claimed that Amina has been abducted/arrested by Syrian authority. Well, one thing led to another and within a week, it was discovered that the 'Gay Girl in Damascus' is nothing more than a figment of imagination of a 40-year US student living in Scotland.
Tom MacMaster, the Gay Girl in Damascus, claimed that he "never expected this level of attention' and said that he was sorry. A self-proclaimed Middle-East activist, however, still had the chutzpah to claim that "While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground." Now, that's taking the sense of megalomania to a whole new level. It really takes nerves to be an American living in Scotland and then claim to have a handle of the "situation on the ground" of a complex society and closed regime.
MacMaster, also claimed that he created the character out of 'Vanity', but it would be unfair to cast aspersions on the MacMaster alone. How about the 'vanity' of the blog-followers, who blindly believed everything and even went ahead and created "Free Amina Abdullah" Facebook group.
News channel lost their credibility a long time ago, thanks to political and corporate affiliations. In such times, internet journalism came as a fresh breath of air. However, with such incidents, where an insignificant individual is able to mould the public view without any sort of accountability, shows that internet is capable of becoming a monster on its own. Keep watching this space to know the fate of MacMaster.