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posted by mrpg on Wednesday March 13 2019, @12:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the ok dept.

'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."


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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:48PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:48PM (#813963) Journal

    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.

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