X-ray of a hoax: the supposed spinster that the ‘manosphere’ laughs at and who has been married for years | Technology

A link arrives in a WhatsApp group with news about a book spinster: a sad woman, without children and with cats, who regrets too late not having been a mother. Jocular comments, funny emojis and something else. But the woman exists. And now she lives with frustration how her pain has been distorted: “It makes me desperate.” It is disinformation in its purest form, with a whole tangle of complexities inside it. For starters, the spinster has been married for years.

In December 2016, Swiss health authorities revealed a data: 36% of Swiss people felt lonely. The country’s public television decided to dedicate a report to that number a few months later, titled A life of loneliness, which starred seven people with different profiles: Pierre-Alain, Stéphanie, Véronique, Raffaele, Nancy, Isabelle and Alain. But only one of them, Véronique, is the object of ridicule, finger-pointing and viral news seven years later. A network of anti-feminist characters has resurrected her story, decontextualized and manipulated, to spread a sexist message that ends up in media such as ABC or the Millennium Mexican. The low passions, the clickbait and ideology have done the job. “It is very frustrating not to have any control over the consequences of the program,” Véronique now admits. Sold as a victim of women’s emancipation, her public ridicule allows a light bulb to shine in the labyrinth of misinformation. It is an anecdote that shows the complexity of the phenomenon, now that there are governments around the world, including the Spanish one, They try to put a stop to it.

In the 2017 documentary, Véronique acknowledged her sadness at her loneliness, at not having children, and admitted through tears that they had never said “I love you” to her: “I would have liked to hear it sometime in my life and now I’m 55 years old and I’m afraid.” that no one ever tells me again.” She did want a stable relationship that she didn’t find: “She asked me why I always choose those who don’t commit.” The documentary’s narration explains that she has had a satisfying professional career, with long stays abroad, but it does not connect this to her frustrating love life.

The clip that went viral in 2024 does connect it. On May 25, a user with a legitimate name like “prtpsmkgtvbnmw” uploaded to his YouTube account an old, edited and poor quality version of Véronique’s intervention, which has had 29,000 views on the video platform. That same day, a conversation thread was created in Forocoches with the video, titled “Successful 55-year-old woman, very sad for not having had children,” which has reached almost 900 comments. The first already establishes the framework: “This is how many will end up, what an epidemic is to come. With the femishierdismo “They have put it in their heads that they have to pursue a professional ‘career’, instead of focusing on starting a family.” The same account that uploaded the video to Forocoches already uploaded another video from the same YouTube account (prtpsmkgtvbnmw, which only had three other videos about feminism), but it did not achieve its goal of lighting the fuse.

From the original video (about loneliness in modern Switzerland) to the YouTube clip and the thread on Forocoches, the packaging has already been changed to offer a totally new reading. Just one more twist is missing. On May 26 (one day after posting on Forocoches), the diary ABC publish the story with this headline: “A woman who prioritized her career regrets not having children at 55.” The subtitle adds more fuel: “Véronique gave up being a mother to put her professional life and her casual relationships first, something she regrets now that she is alone.” Véronique neither “prioritized”, nor “resigned”, nor put it first, but it is the formula that triumphs. The network account Captain Bitcoina common figure in the dissemination of hoaxes against the “progressive dictatorship”, quickly buys this approach – who blames Véronique for her own loneliness – and tweets it almost copied: more than 380,000 people see it.

But ABC He is much more successful with his piece. His Facebook post is among the five most viewed on his header in recent weeks (according to the network monitoring tool Spike). His first tweet 4 million users view it on X, partly due to many accounts who criticize to the ABC, but spreading the original tweet over and over again. They have managed to go viral, on the backs of supporters and detractors: the important thing is the engagement, the burning feelings that provoke comments, reposts, more clicks. The piece is signed by an SEO editor, journalists who prepare news designed to get more visits through Google and social networks. And it is published in the ABC Recreo section, frivolous and light news, accompanied by other information such as “The reason why you should not use the washing machine’s quick program” and “They reveal the real reason for the wedding of Julián Muñoz and Mayte Zaldívar ”.

But Véronique’s story is not only clickbait, it is also misinformation. She is now sorry for the protagonist of the story, whose email is easy to find with a simple Google, and that she feels frustrated by the situation. “It is a lesson and it is also the time in which we live, it makes me desperate…” she responds when she sees that she offers her life as a moral against the emancipation of women. In a five-minute search, you reach her email and also her Instagram account, where you can see photos from her wedding four years ago, in July 2020. “I met my husband thanks to the program! ”, he emphasizes. It’s not at all difficult to compare what you see in a botched video uploaded to a suspicious YouTube account.

The danger of misinformation

“It is pure manosphere in a serious newspaper, they have broken the last frontier,” summarizes Elisa García-Mingo, who has been investigating misogyny on the networks for years, the so-called manosphere. These actors try to spread their sexist and reactionary ideology as much as they can: they call it “pollinating.” And filter your message to a viral news story ABC (and the multiple media latin americans who replicated it) is a complete pollination success. “It is the lightheartedness: it is difficult to establish the line between viral news to laugh at and sexist discourse, but that is the true role of manosphere“, explains García-Mingo, “breaking consensus, the social pact against sexism, sneaking misogyny through the back door, with humor and fun messages.”

The researcher from the Complutense University points out another perspective of the problem, fostered by the evil incentives of the media, which desperately seek more visits to their websites: “Make profit and monetize misogyny, make clickbait with it, because it sells economically. Serious media cannot afford that,” she criticizes. Almost all information websites have a section dedicated to the viral, with little effort and little filter, where inconsequential stories are collected, mostly caught on networks or TV programs, such as that of a lonely woman in Switzerland.

But sometimes there is an important ideological burden behind it. The expert assures that it is a type of message that she has seen a lot lately, about “women who do not define themselves as feminists, but who are under the dictatorship of feminism, who are told: ‘Wake up, you are going to be alone.’” . The second most voted comment in the piece ABC says: “Thousands and thousands of Spaniards live the same thing. They have been deceived but well.”

The responsibility of serious media such as ABC It is decisive, as shown in the latest major study on misinformation on social networks, published in the journal Science: Misleading headlines from traditional media are more dangerous than false stories from malicious websites. Jennifer Allen, an MIT researcher and co-author of the article, summed it up like this: “Competition for clicks is a challenge, but I don’t think that absolves the media of responsibility.” The calling ecosystem fake newsconspiracies of all kinds and reactionary messages “is very porous,” says García-Mingo, and its messages are filtered in many ways. 81% of Europeans believes that the existence of news that distorts reality is “a problem for democracy.” Sometimes they are just a link to joke about with friends in a WhatsApp group.

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