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'Momo' may be 'dead,' but experts say avoiding the next hoax is up to us
[...] So how did we get here? How did this apparent hoax, now just the latest fodder for internet memes, wind up causing panic among parents in countries from India to Colombia, from the UK to the United States, and from the Houses of Parliament to U.S. police agencies?
[...] Laura Hazard Owen, deputy editor of Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, called the "Momo challenge" phenomenon "the most fascinating/unique fake news story I've covered in awhile." The problem, she said, was that most of the news stories warning people about "Momo" appeared to be based on hearsay. One local news station, she pointed out, "simply interviewed a 5-year-old," while others ran with anecdotes from parents who had heard from their child that they had heard from another child... you get the point.
[...] "Unless you can watch all media, TV and news, consciously, step back from it, get a little distance and ask yourself what's being said, you're going to be taken in," Dr. Mramor argued. "It's like when you're watching a scary movie and get sucked into the plot... be a conscious consumer," she said. "And if more people were, this would never have happened. We wouldn't even be talking about this story."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:00PM (22 children)
Sorry, but what the hell is this story about? Who or what is "Momo"? Why should I care? I don't pay attention to social media or local BS daily news. Any tiny hint at what "Momo" is or even a link to basic info would be important to a summary here. As it is, TFA doesn't explain what Momo is either, and the link it provided in the story to supposedly explain it is also quite uninformative. So, I had to read through a summary and two articles before doing an internet search to find another article to figure out what the heck is going on.
And now I want those 10 minutes of my life back, because there's absolutely no reason I can see that I should care about this non-story. It's not real. It's internet hysteria... an urban legend. Okay. Whatever. Are we going to start passing along the other urban legends you get in those chain emails from your weird uncle now?
The sad thing here is that -- unlike, say, the fake satanic ritual abuse hysteria of the 1980s -- this stuff could very well be real. In fact, we know there are internet "challenges" encouraging kids to do stupid and dangerous crap all the time. We know (and have had stories posted here recently about it) that there are wackos and trolls out there who embed weird messages about violence and rape and suicide and all sorts of stuff in videos that look like those intended for young kids, and they post these things on YouTube and other platforms.
So, it's not like "Momo" is even some cautionary tale about overblown hysteria -- because there are REAL reasons for parents to be vigilant about online BS that very well could be like this. (A point surprisingly absent from the media coverage, which seems to be about stupid remarks from local news stations and cops who don't really know what's going on.)
Why am I reading about this again? What is the point?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:13PM
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/momo-challenge [knowyourmeme.com]
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/momo-sculpture-destroyed-keisuke-aiso-802627/ [rollingstone.com]
These don't answer your question, but uh... viral challenges are spreading through our interconnected internet hivemind!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:17PM
FOMO of momo? Don't worry bro, I haven't got the slightest clue either. And by the sound of it, ignorance is a bliss.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 13 2019, @01:18PM (16 children)
Oh, and if anyone else here is the boat I was in and doesn't know what this is about:
Momo (as I understand it) is a sort of anti-meme, or a meme that claims to be more prevalent than it is. Basically, someone pulled an image of a sculpture made by a Japanese artist that looks a bit like a distorted female face (somewhat bird-like with bug eyes) with a torso that morphs into bird legs, and they claimed this was "Momo." Supposedly, "Momo" has been appearing in social media targeted at kids, encouraging them to do dangerous challenges or self-harm (even suicide).
Except most of this is hype and Momo mostly has been appearing in memes poking fun at these non-existent challenges, etc. Nevertheless, parents and police and social media platforms have all been (ahem) atwitter about this BS lately.
Apparently. I really don't know, but that's what I gathered from a few minutes. I see no compelling reason to waste time learning more.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:11PM
Matches what I know. My impression is that lots of parents have panicked about this, whereas not many kids have ever heard of it.
Even if that weren't the case, as a parent it's stupid to panic over this. Momo could only ever be a problem for young kids. If a parent of young kids isn't supervising them on the Internet, well...Momo would be the least of their worries.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by microtodd on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:55PM (12 children)
Being a parent of an 8 year old and a 10 year old, here's the relevance.
I got notifications from the school, after school day care, and local law enforcement warning me of this. i.e. telling me to watch my kids to make sure they don't watch a Momo video and self-harm themselves. Because FUD. But actually this was a hoax, and there is no such thing as a Momo video so there's nothing to protect my kids from. Hence, lots of fear, hysteria, and lost productivity. I'd rather teachers and cops were doing more useful things than spending energy worrying about trying to prevent something nonexistent.
So how do we prevent this from happening again? We need to educate people. Here at Soylent we're all pretty internet-savvy and understand things like the Streisand Effect. Apparently many educators and LEs don't. How can we teach them? As knowledge members of society, its kind of on us to help figure this out, for the betterment of everyone.
IMHO, that's why this article is relevant on SoylentNews.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:33PM (5 children)
> how do we prevent this from happening again?
You don't. The next generation of helicopter mommies will find a dozen other scary non-existent things over which to have hysterical fears. One of my aunties used to pray for me because I played D&D. I didn't try to play any LPs backward, so I guess I missed out on those particular Satanic messages. And don't you know the streets are swarming with criminals and murderers and child molesters? Letting your kids be "free range" is Child Neglect! And don't even think of leaving your child buckled into the car for 3 seconds while you dash inside a convenience store for a snack. Use hand sanitizer after every contact with a door knob.
That automobile travel is a lot more dangerous than anything else most people do on a regular basis goes largely unnoticed. Before you dash into the store without the kid, you've already taken the greatest risk to your child's safety simply by driving yourself and the kid over to the store. And, you don't know whether those swarming criminals are about to try to rob the convenience store. Lot safer for the kid to be buckled into a car seat than in a store when an armed robbery is in progress.
It may be a good thing to let them have their fun. Then, when the hoax is exposed, they can feel foolish that they fell for a prank, and maybe, just maybe, be a tiny bit more skeptical in the future.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:07PM
IOW, make them learn the hard way.
So if one were to create more such fake memes, it could be argued one was just trying to help educate people ... I see where you're going with this. ;-)
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:20PM
Better be glad she was praying for you! Although personally I think those daily prayers would be more useful directed to Cuthbert or Moradin.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @08:06PM
"I didn't try to play any LPs backward, so I guess I missed out on those particular Satanic messages"
You must have missed out on Fire On High.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:48PM
Dunno. I played D&D and was very much interested in playing a certain album [wikipedia.org] backwards.
That said, there always has been moral panics throughout history, and there always will be. Just because they're now On the Internet and thus can spread faster doesn't mean that they can, or will be, controlled.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @11:35PM
In my (definitely pre-helicopter) time, the scary rumor was that drug fiends were putting LSD on sticker sheets. Rationally, I don't know how parents would have thought their 6 year old could then afford an LSD habit once addicted (if that were even possible), but someone randomly wanting to cause harm to their kid would have been the backstop justification.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:44PM
Hey homie, let's go sniff jenkem!
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:37PM
Meh the videos definitely exist. I've seen one. That said, pretty sure it was aimed more at scaring the bejesus out of parents than actually at kids.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:23PM (1 child)
Better - the kids now know exactly what to go looking for, and the teenagers old enough to code things up for a joke will now actually go and make one of these things.
Source: I work in schools.
As always, the same old advice. Either educate your children to a maturity level where they are comfortable to tell you when they feel uncomfortable online, or do not allow them on the Internet unsupervised.
No, not even "just for ten minutes".
No, don't assume a filter is safe.
No, don't assume that their friends won't be showing them friends.
No, don't assume that the child will "obviously" tell you everything because you have "such a good relationship".
Deny, Supervise, Educate, Hope for the best. In that chronological order, as they age.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:50PM
A case of not stuffing beans up one's nose [wikipedia.org] at its finest.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:10PM
Consider, the schools and teachers that fell for this crap are supposed to be helping you to teach your children critical thinking skills. They are now entitled to at least one conversation with you that ends with them being red-face embarrassed.
The problem goes beyond the internet. Consider the pre-internet panic over strangers handing out poison halloween candy. I personally remember that scare in the '70s. I also know that there has NEVER been a single case of it. All instances have turned out to be pranks by older siblings or deranged parents. It seems that it never occurred to a whole bunch of people that such a crime would be nearly impossible to get away with or that all of the stories were about a warning going out rather than about an actual victim.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 14 2019, @01:41AM
I agree with bzipitidoo. Worrying is IMHO the emotional version of the human immune system. When human life was tough and hazardous, then worry served a useful purpose, to rethink and anticipate those dangers that surrounded us, particularly women with children. Now, with vastly safer modern human societies, it triggers on imaginary dangers. People will always worry, even if they don't have anything useful to worry about. That's why Momo happened.
As for the school officials, it's a standard case of responsibility and accountability avoidance. Warning about "Momo" costs them nothing, but is great theater, giving the false impression that they're doing their job, even as it imposes burdens on the more gullible parts of the students' families.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:23PM
It was a moral panic caused by a well-positioned and executed anti-pattern meme. This was partly merely luck mind you. It managed to catch on and spread rapidly on the heels of other recent news reports.
Things like this are constantly being created and spread to the wind, but this one happened to hit when the public was primed for such a thing to catch fire and spread, so to speak. Recent actual incidents made this meme warning seem believable. It was the difference between throwing a lit cigarette in the ocean during a storm or throwing it into dry brush during a drought.
(Score: 1) by progo on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:13PM
So, this Fox piece which is clearly a paid promotion for BuzzFeed, is using a BuzzFeed fake news story to convince you to follow BozzFeed.
Brilliant.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday March 13 2019, @02:34PM
Sigh - it seems like only yesterday we were all desperately explaining to worried muggles why you couldn't possibly get a computer virus by opening an email with the subject "Good Times"... because back then you couldn't get a computer virus from an email unless you spent 10 minutes mucking about with UUdecocde and manually unpacking ZIP files... Then, Outlook, buffer overruns, disguised web links etc. happened...
So, the problem is partly overblown hysteria - its a sort of denial-of-service packet-flood attack on common sense. People are so busy having to debunk the fake 'immediate danger' threats that the messages about sensible caution get drowned out. See also "the boy who cried wolf".
Of course, this is all a subset of "Why go to all the expense and effort of responsible journalism when you can just run another 'B-list celebrity posts troll-bait on Tw@tter - gets trolled - dozens of people tweet their outrage' story " - I sometimes suspect that the real menace of social media is the way traditional media (terrified of being replaced) are giving it status and respectability.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:59PM
No, it really couldn't. If any of it was actually real, the news stories wouldn't have consisted exclusively of reports that some authority or another was warning about it because some other authority warned about it. If anything actually happened to a child, the news would be about a particular place and there would be long-lens shots of bereaved parents. There would be news of tracing the WhatsApp account involved (it may be end-to-end crypto, but if you have one of the endpoints it's not that hard to trace).
The problem is that when "authorities" prove themselves to be dangerously credulous idiots we don't make them turn in their badge and gun. When the cops demolish a daycare and dig up the entire damned property to a depth of 3 feet looking for the satanic tunnels that a child in a trance said he saw after being flushed down the toilet and SURPRISE, come up empty, we fail to tease them mercilessly until they resign. We fail to point and laugh when they paralyze a major city because of lite-brite or cordon off a city block in a several hour standoff with a transformer action figure.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday March 13 2019, @07:25PM
She throws rainbow fruit salad parties where young goths play Doom or D&D.
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