The claim

Pictures and a video are intended to prove that Mattel will soon bring a pregnant Ken onto the market.

Our conclusion

The pictures and video come from an American satire site.

Both individual pictures and a video show Barbie and a pregnant Ken, which is supposed to be available in stores soon. In the video, the new doll from Mattel is introduced in a somewhat squeaky girl's voice, which is typical of such advertising. But apparently many people only saw the first few seconds of the video and immediately became upset - because the clear clichés, exaggerations and even violence in the video already indicate that it is just satire.

The excitement about pregnant Ken

There has been a lot of excitement about pregnant Ken on Twitter in particular since the beginning of June:

From this you can see “how sick and broken” the world is. Of course, there is nothing more than a “satanic agenda” behind this:

And of course people are also getting excited about it on Telegram:

Excitement about Ken also on Telegram
Excitement about Ken also on Telegram

The video has been on YouTube since June 7th... but the crowd of excited people probably preferred to download it and re-upload it to Twitter so that no one would think to google the source, because the symbol at the end of the video, a stylized bee is not particularly well known in this country.

A Babylonian bee buzzed

The Babylon Bee ”, whose logo can be seen at the end of the video and in the preview image on YouTube, was, according to its own information, created almost from nothing exactly 6,000 years ago. They already reported on the Tower of Babel, the Exodus, the Reformation and the British-American War of 1812.

What is very striking about the site is that the lack of topics is often designed to annoy conservative Christians, who are quite widespread in the United States, something they themselves admit : " We write satire about Christian topics, political topics and everyday life ."

To make it clear again: The video comes from a satirical site. It's NOT real!

The corresponding article appeared on “The Babylon Bee” on May 10th (see HERE ), but it wasn't until the video appeared in June that users in this country became aware of it - and thought it was real.

The satire dilemma

Satire is essentially a method of making fun of events, situations and (higher-ranking) people by exaggerating and exaggerating facts. Unfortunately, the term has been misused by relevant groups for several years in order to spread false reports, supposedly under the protective cover that it is “just satire”.

For example, a well-known Internet troll distributed sharepics with fake quotes from politicians for years, labeled as “satire” in very small font. Even if the disseminators were made aware of the satire, they usually only received the succinct answer that he/she could .

Undeniably, we live in times in which reality often overtakes satire, which is why many satirical articles seem to be believed without the slightest doubt: A pregnant Ken? Naturally! And even if it's just satire: " But it could be!"

But, unfortunately, this is also where the danger of satire lies today: no matter how absurd a satirical article may be, no matter how many references to satire it may contain, and no matter how clearly marked “satire,” there will be people who don’t just believe it , but also want to act or call for action!

The fact that users are calling for a boycott of Mattel because of Ken's pregnancy: don't worry about it, very few of these users are among the company's customers. However, things become more critical when it comes to “satirical” false reports about refugees or false quotes from politicians: an online mob forms very quickly and does not shy away from death threats in the comments.

Satire can work very well, but not everything that calls itself satire is. For example, the many small Twitter accounts that write “just satire” in their bio and believe that they can offend everyone and everything are not. Even sites that have been publishing false reports about refugees for years and calling it "satire" cannot absolve themselves of the spread of fakes - if only because they disregard a principle of satire: When people are criticized satirically, it is higher-ups, such as politicians, but not anyone who already has a difficult time socially, like refugees.

To really distinguish whether something is satire or not, only media literacy can help: If a site is full of exaggerated, mostly funny reports, like the Postillon , then it is satire. If a page or a social media account only writes against certain groups, be it refugees or political parties, it is simply incitement.


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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 )