Fakelore and Fake News: Have You Heard The One About Anti-Trump Protesters Blocking The Ambulance?

Paul Bunyan is a clear example of fakelore. Fakelore is described as "inauthentic, manufactured folklore" presented as if it were genuinely traditional.

The term fakelore was coined in 1950 by American folklorist Richard M. Dorson. Dorson's examples included the fictional cowboy Pecos Bill, who was presented as a folk hero of the American West but was actually invented by the writer Edward S. O'Reilly in 1923. 

Dorson also regarded Paul Bunyan as fakelore. Although the number one fakelore hero, Paul Bunyan originated as a character in traditional tales told by loggers in the Great Lakes region of North America, James Stevens, an ad writer working for the Red River Lumber Company in Minnesota, is said to have invented many of the stories about him that are known today. Others say the character originated in the oral tradition of North American loggers, and was later popularized by freelance writer William B. Laughead (1882–1958) in a 1916 promotional pamphlet for the same previously mentioned Red River Lumber Company. According to Dorson, advertisers and popularizers turned Bunyan into a "pseudo folk hero of twentieth-century mass culture" who bore little resemblance to the original.

Research does not demonstrate

whether Bunyan actually lived or was wholly mythical. [Researchers] have noted, however, that some of the older lumberjacks whom they interviewed claimed to have known him or members of his crew, and the supposed location of his grave was actually pointed out in northern Minnesota. In this regard, it should be noted that Bunyan's extreme gigantism was a later invention, and that early stories either do not mention it or, as in [one research] paper, refer to him as being about seven feet tall. Source.

Fakelore, at some level, develops from "fake news," i.e. local or regional stories that are untrue but many people are convinced what they have heard or read in social media is "real."

Fake news has been in the news of late, as the realization settles on the mainstream media, Facebook executives, and Twitter readers that much of what they read has little to do with reality.

Headline stories this week speak volumes about what is occurring:

"Trump's fake-news presidency," Washington Post, November 18, 2016.

"Obama, With Angela Merkel in Berlin, Assails Spread of Fake News," New York Times, November 17, 2016.

"I fooled America with fake news stories and got Trump elected," New York Post, November 17, 2016.

"7 signs the news you're sharing is fake," Mashable, November 17, 2016.

"Here are all the fake 'news' sites to watch out for on Facebook," The Daily Dot, November 16, 2016.

Let's look at one "fake news" story that has greatly circulated in the wake of Donald Trump's election and the anti-Trump demonstrations. It is the alleged story of anti-Trump protesters blocking an ambulance with the father of a 4-year-old girl dying. It's false, fake, and a hoax, but it's become fakelore extraordinary.

There are a half million hits on the Internet where you can read versions of the story, with most mentions of them presenting the "news" as "real."

The only problem with the "news item" is that there are no names, no locations (although various ones do pop up before another one is mentioned), no sources, and not too surprisingly, there is a short history of the same tale showing up down through the years.

Earlier in 2016, a variant on the story was tied to Black Lives Matter protestors on a bridge with a "suffering child" in an ambulance being blocked by their march. The child was reported to have died.

ABC News, on July 11, 2016, debunked that story:

A rumor swirled on Facebook that a young girl died as a result of the "Black Lives Matter" protest Sunday night. That rumor is not true.
Early during Sunday's protest that stopped traffic on the Interstate 40 bridge, a car trying to take a child to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital got stuck in the traffic jam. Police worked with protesters, who let the car go through. Source.

The debunking site Snopes examined the post-Election Day fake news of the father dying because of the blocked ambulance, and 

found no corresponding news reports of any such death occurring (in conjunction with anti-Trump protests or otherwise) in the United States since the 8 November 2016 election. Source.

But the protesters-blocking-ambulances fake news continues to spread, and is now part of current urban fakelore.

Could you have seen us being here, ten years ago? This is the era of post-truth.