I'm still alive! There was no truck blockade in Vienna. But on Saturday evening I met Franzl in the inn. He was convinced of something else.
I always meet him at the inn. Franzl often sits there, drinks his sparkling wine and tells all sorts of stories from his life. On Saturday he also told another story. No, he talked about his shopping trip.
Franzl was in all sorts of supermarkets on Saturday. At Spar, at Billa, at Penny, Hofer and everywhere (including at Merkur, as he always says). He shopped, he stocked up.
He bought non-perishable food. He bought toilet paper. He even bought more than enough dry food for his dog so that he would have enough to eat for the next few weeks. “Why did you buy so much, Franzl?” I ask him. “Yes, because of the blockade!” replies Franzl.
Blockade? There was something. “Tell me, Franzl, you don’t mean that weird picture that says the truck drivers are going to block Vienna, do you?” Franzl takes out his smartphone. He opens a message from his cousin from Carinthia. “Look, here it is!”
Truck drivers are shutting down. Not!
Yes, there it is. Franzl shows me exactly the picture I wrote about last Friday. It's about a photo with the statement that the truck drivers wanted to close Vienna out of frustration and that we should stock up on food first.
Franzl really believed that. Franzl was somewhat convinced that we would experience bottlenecks in the next few days. I understand him in a way. Of course he is afraid. Of course he doesn't know how to deal with this little picture. He just sees that the call exists and feels affected. Concerned because the effects could be noticeable to him. For him and his little dog. Of course he wants to avoid that.
Franzl couldn't have imagined that such pictures would want to achieve exactly this kind of behavior. By the way, the photo itself was already used in a Portuguese online article from October 15, 2019. This was apparently about the agreement between truck drivers / the (transport) union and the employers' association ( compare ). But images like this always make it. They unsettle people and drive a wedge into society. They create radicalization on different levels. And that annoys me.
Of course there was no blockade by truck drivers. And I survived last weekend too. All of Vienna survived. There hasn't been anywhere near a truck blocking any freeway lane for political reasons. There were just these social media pictures beforehand that unsettled many people.
And there are so many people who simply no longer know what they can believe anymore. And that's exactly where the disinformation achieved what it wanted to achieve. Uncertainty and fear.
That could also be of interest
The backstory: A ten-day war that never started. Well, apparently a war broke out last weekend. A ten day war. Have you noticed? Continue reading …
Note: Franzl is a fictional person
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )