Do you already know the Mimikama checklist for detecting fakes? If not then look here first . If you do, then you know that item 1 on this list is the most important.
Point one means that you have to have a certain feeling as to whether the content is a twisted statement, a manipulated representation, or simply a hoax. You have to at least be able to suspect something. You can often tell from the story itself, even from its narrative, that it is a hoax. That's exactly what it should be about: narratives that can be used to identify false reports or distorted content or manipulated representations.
The HIV narrative
Stories about HIV infection and the supposedly everyday ease of becoming infected with HIV have been found on social media for years and are always being shared. Nevertheless, many of these stories turned out to be hoaxes or urban legends. A classic among these urban legends is the supposedly HIV-infected needle in the cinema seat. This is a very interesting legend because this legend shows the dynamics that a hoax can develop.

In short: This legend says that an HIV-infected needle was allegedly found in a cinema seat in the city of XY. You should be careful and avoid this cinema or check the cinema seat carefully before sitting down.
The special dynamic of this false report lies in its location. If you change the location in the hoax, the dynamics of the hoax begins again. Many years ago we observed that this false report was traveling to Berlin, then to Munich, and even to Hamburg, Braunschweig, and Vienna. However, the same thing applied to all places: it was always a hoax.
Fortunately, this hoax has not been spread for a long time because many people have understood that it is a classic urban legend. What lives on, however, is the narrative. The fear of becoming infected with HIV in an everyday situation. The same narrative appears in a correspondingly modified form, for example, in the case of bananas allegedly infected with HIV. Here we basically encounter the same story, except that instead of cinema seats, it involves bananas. The reason for the assumption that bananas are infected with HIV and that consumption itself infects people are photos that show bananas suffering from a deficiency.

The documented defect is “dry red”. This banana has received insufficient nutrients from the plant. In addition to the dried out and consequently reddish-brown flesh of the fruit, the deficiency can also be recognized by the unusually narrow shape. The occurrence is relatively common, but such undersupplied bananas are generally recognized and sorted out in the packing station. There is no disease or contamination of the banana of any kind. In our opinion, a health risk is ruled out. Nevertheless, you can regularly find warnings about these supposedly HIV-infected bananas on social media.
A special and regularly appearing representative of the HIV narrative is the so-called HIV-infected needle in fuel pumps. Anyone who has dealt with this HIV narrative for years could recognize right from the start that this story was largely a hoax.

The photo is real. It comes from the USA, more precisely it was taken at a gas station on Alessandro Boulevard in Moreno Valley. It was Jose Medina who wanted to refuel his vehicle on his way to work on May 22, 2017, but was injured by this needle. Medina then drove straight to the hospital to be checked for infections. The test results subsequently proved that there were no infections. The police were also informed and the incident was also discussed on Fox11 . His daughter Jacqueline Medina initially published this photo to urge caution. What she couldn't have imagined at the time: The picture would gain its own momentum and be dramatized by third parties by publishing the story in other places and expanding it to include the HIV component.
Nevertheless, this story was a great template for turning it into a big hoax. Accelerated by automatic translation on Facebook, this hoax gained access to a large audience (recognizable by the bumpy translation). Individual status messages with the picture of the fuel nozzle alone were shared hundreds of thousands of times. Equipped with a red circle and dramatic statement that this story is now the latest thing, many people in many countries shared this hoax to warn other people.
These examples make it easy to see that an old legend doesn't actually die out, but rather presents itself again and again in a different guise. However, if you recognize the narrative structure, it is much easier to become skeptical about such a report.
The horror narrative
Not only the doctors, but we also know that “fear, hate, tits and the weather forecast” make a good hoax. Many false reports play on our fears and even go beyond them and develop into digital horror stories. These fears can develop into mass fear that impacts everyday life.
Such a story and a corresponding development were shown by the urban legend about the alleged organ mafia, which drives across Central Europe, kidnapping masses of children with its white delivery vehicles, in order to bring these children to Romania or Bulgaria and disembowel them there. The organs are then sold on the black market by the Organ Mafia.
Crazy story, right? It was precisely this story that caused many people to be afraid of white delivery vehicles in the spring and summer of 2014 and to post or share this fear in the form of status updates on Facebook. The craftsman or the scrap collector who drove slowly through the streets in his vehicle was quickly declared to be a supporter of the organ mafia. And since pictures or photos always have a greater impact, a photo was of course quickly added to this story.

This false report also has an element of dynamism. Because what was initially supposedly only found in Duisburg and Essen was already available in Berlin the next day with the same picture. After that there was no stopping and people all over the country suddenly saw delivery trucks driving through their streets. The false reports about the child-abducting Eastern Europeans went so far that even the police had to intervene on social media. By the way, has anyone noticed? The old fairy tale about child-abducting gypsies resonates in this story.
Interestingly, the whole organ mafia story sounds too detailed to be a cheap fake. And that's where we come to the point of many narratives: At their core, they always have a single cause that may not be valid across the board, but has the potential to be relevant enough to become a nationwide social media phenomenon. So here too, there is exactly ONE source that describes such an incident in Germany and that can also be verified: “How the organ mafia guts children”. That's the title of an article in the Berliner-Kurier. And rightly so, because it's about a fictional story from the “crime scene” ( see Berliner Kurier ).
“An organ trafficking gang kidnaps minors in order to remove their kidneys. (…) Our “crime scene” is a “what if” story from the area of organized crime,” says director Nils Willbrandt to the editors. “The story plays with the idea of what can happen if we transfer the criminal conditions in other parts of the world to our country.”
So it's a hypothetical story that didn't happen, but reads very closely to our fake reports. A quick note: This “Tatort” episode dates from February 2011, so it is older than the first fake reports on the topic, which we date to autumn 2011!
But that's far from the only story shared on social media involving one's own health or the health of others. For example, two years ago we almost experienced mass hysteria when it came to the term horror clowns. Horror clowns, let's keep this story in mind again.
It was about warnings issued around the world that people should be careful if they come across horror clowns on the street on Halloween. The media exaggerated this story, authorities and schools warned, but in the end it turned out that a large number of warnings were simply false reports. At the same time, the 24aktuelles portal suddenly became known in Germany, on which people could write made-up stories, which were then presented through the portal like press releases. We found over 500 false reports about horror clowns on this portal within seven days alone.
Admittedly, of course there have been real incidents regarding horror clowns. Only some of them were freeloaders who had fun because of the media coverage, or vice versa, they were fearful people who attacked people dressed as clowns. In any case, compared to the excessive media coverage, these were only extreme isolated cases.
The situation was very similar with the so-called Blue Whale Challenge, in which young people supposedly had to complete 50 challenges, i.e. tasks, and the last task would be associated with their own suicide. The media response and the warnings from authorities and schools were immense, but the challenge itself, as well as the alleged deaths of over 100 young people in Russia, could never be proven or linked to a Blue Whale Challenge. At first it was a hoax, a bad joke, a kind of “creepy pasta”. There probably wasn’t even an actual “game” played. “Creepy Pasta” refers to scary stories that are spread on the Internet. Basically the digital version of the horror story.
Then the story became self-perpetuating when 130 child deaths in Russia were linked to it, even though this was not yet confirmed. To date, a connection to the Blue Whale Challenge has not been and cannot be clearly established, but this did not prevent many media outlets from presenting this connection as established, even if some later backtracked or qualified their statements. Here too, the conversational relevance of the horror story was so great that it made its leap from social media into reality. At least when it comes to warning. A wave of fear quickly spread among people, without any real reason.
And now things get particularly interesting. In the summer of 2018, Momo suddenly appeared. Momo this strange creepy creature who supposedly answers via WhatsApp. Momo is a chain letter that combines various elements of other chain letters and legends.
As far as the phone numbers are concerned, there are probably a lot of copycats behind them who are taking advantage of the Momo hype to spread horror. The original WhatsApp message, which spread via text, is quite clearly a copy of the Teresa Figaldo story . To give this Theresa Figaldo story a face, a photo of a statue that originally comes from Japan was used. The Momo profile picture shows the head of a statue, which is on display at the Vanilla Gallery in Tokyo, Japan and was nicknamed "Momo" by visitors. Numerous photos show that visitors enjoy being photographed with her.

But that wasn't all, because the Momo story suddenly became dynamic and merged with elements from the Blue Whale Challenge. Suddenly, over 100 dead children were implanted into the legend of Momo, who supposedly died because they didn't forward the chain letter. Momo also shows very well how individual stories merge into one another, get widespread attention through the media, and in the end invite free riders onto the scene.
And now it's autumn again...
And one can assume that the narrative of loss of tradition that has been harbored for years will resurface. The fear of losing St. Martin's Day can be cited as a precedent. People have been fighting for their St. Martin's festival on social media for five years now. Sharepics and striking statements are used to propagate that renaming the festival to the Lantern Festival or the Festival of Lights will not be tolerated. , the St. Martin's Festival, which has been celebrated as a lantern festival in large parts of Germany for ages ( compare ), is only part of the story.
For years now, we have been experiencing a frantic search on social media for evidence of how our Christian tradition is being torn away from us. This supposedly always happens by renaming products or names from Christian traditions. A famous representative, in addition to the St. Martin's Festival, is the Zipfelmann from Penny.
Apart from the fact that the Zipfelmann story has now passed its zenith, as the outdated claim can hardly be surpassed in terms of ridiculousness, a method has developed from the original intention of being able to identify a loss of tradition based on product names. Suddenly manipulated photos appear that show a Santa Claus with the caption Year-end figure, mosques are suddenly discovered on Advent calendars or ultimately Milka's smiling bunny, who has always been called the smiling bunny, is portrayed as a victim of creeping Islamization. All of these claims work in the same way, to show how little things that are supposed to have been changed are intended to remove Christian traditions.

This supposed loss of tradition is the expression of a manipulative representation of everyday things that builds up into a pure wave of indignation. We are curious to see what evidence will emerge in the coming fall/winter period that uses the narrative of a loss of tradition.
Know and recognize
So you notice quite clearly that many stories either come from other stories and have simply become dynamic, or they use elements from other stories and thus adopt the mindset created from previous stories. Especially when a story already exists for certain keywords, it is even easier to transfer the associated emotions and reactions to a similar story.
These new stories are often quite simple and carry the characteristics of existing legends clearly and unchanged. All you have to do is swap a place, a name or a product and an urban legend has become dynamic and can flourish again. In this respect, it is always an advantage to at least know the narrative structure and be able to identify it in new stories.
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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 )

