Pizzagate Shooting

On Sunday, December 5, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, 28 of Salisbury, North Carolina, walked into the front door of Comet Ping Pong and pointed a firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee. 

Maddison is an unusual name. Maddison is an elaborate respelling of Madison. As a given name, Madison originated as the transferred use of a surname. The surname is derived from maternal ancestors and comes from the medieval female given name Madde, which was a short form of Maud.  From English, the meaning of the name Madison is derived from Matthew, "gift of God'," or from Matilda "strong fighter." (James Madison Jr. was the fourth President of the United States, from 1809 to 1817.)

Comet Ping Pong has been associated with the Pizzagate story.

In early November 2016, several fake news websites and online forums falsely implicated the restaurant and various Democratic Party figures as part of a fake child trafficking ring, which was dubbed "pizzagate" in some circles. This fake story was debunked by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, fact-checking website Snopes and The New York Times, among others. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed, threatened on social media websites, and given negative Yelp reviews. After continued harassment, Comet Ping Pong increased the security for concerts held inside its premises. Source.

Sunday's event was a realtime drama allegedly caused by a fake news story. Various pro-Pizzagate sites are saying this incident, however, is a "false flag" incident so everyone will think that the conspiracy story is "nuts."

Welch said he was investigating a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza place fired an assault rifle inside the Washington, D.C., restaurant on Sunday injuring no one.

The employee was able to flee and notify police. Welch then fired the gun into the floor. Police responded and arrested Welch without incident. They recovered an "assault rifle," Brown said. Welch was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.

Welch has appeared on social media with an assault weapon.

Two firearms were recovered inside the restaurant and an additional weapon was recovered from the suspect's vehicle, police said in a statement on Sunday evening.

Welch told police he'd come to the restaurant to "self-investigate" the fictitious online conspiracy theory that spread online during Clinton's run for the White House, the police statement said.

The Comet Ping Pong is in a neighborhood of well-tended private homes and apartment buildings on leafy streets that lead to a mix of shops, restaurants and the Politics and Prose book store. The restaurant gained notoriety during the presidential campaign after fake news stories stated that Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief ran a child sex ring out of the restaurant, The New York Times and other news organizations have reported.

The Comet, its owner, staff and nearby businesses were caught up in an onslaught of conspiracy theories and fake news during the often contentious presidential campaign and were the victims social media attacks and death threats, the Post reported.

James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong, released a statement late Sunday night that denied what he called the “malicious and utterly false accusations” and said the company hoped to resume normal operations within a few days.

“I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away,” Alefantis said in the statement widely distributed by the media.

Social media's visuals tagged to "Pizzagate" have been ongoing since November 2016. That "fake news" would inspire "real news" in such a matter may be a first.

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.