I was recently forwarded the following “news story,” on telegram. I enjoy people sending me resources on telegram, and I’d say close to half the site’s content originates from there. But this was another story.
And by another story I mean a work of fiction.
A news story about a 25-year-old German woman who faced cuts to her unemployment benefits for turning down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel was carried by a variety of English-language news sources in January 2005. It has struck a chord in many readers as an example of liberal morality and bureaucracy run amok: if prostitution is legalized (as it was in Germany back in 2002), this story suggests, then society has conferred its approval upon that trade, and prostitution can therefore be proffered to (and even foisted upon) women as a valid choice of employment.
We were initially skeptical about the literal truth of the version reported in the English press, however, because the issue seemed to have received scant attention in the German press. In fact, the origin of this story was evidently a 18 December 2004 article published in the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung (also known as TAZ) which did not report that women in Germany must accept employment in brothels or face cuts in their unemployment benefits. (Although it claimed there had been “isolated cases” of such, it did not provide any source or documentation to back up that statement.)
You’d be right to point out that Snopes is a fake fact-checking site, which never seems to fact-check any bullshit the parasite class pulls out. Normally that’d be a great point, except go check the date of that article. In fact, don’t bother, I’ll put it right here for you.
Jaime can we zoom in on that.
August, 2014, and the original story is from 2004. And by story I mean “hoax.” Now let’s take a look at this tweet again.
I unironically support throwing people in jail for pushing fake news like this. The only thing this could possibly achieve is to make us look stupid, and I’m tired of having my time wasted. A screenshot is not evidence.
I have to regretfully admit to falling for this. In my defense, the world is in such a sad state that the story is all too believable.