B20: Money and Politics

After reading Inside The Macedonian Fake-News Complex by Samanth Subramanian, I was left feeling a little bit uneasy. I knew that politics were in everything, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, and people can make money from posting on the internet, but I did not realize the extremes or extent of them all. What made this article interesting was that it detailed the life of an 18-year-old from Veles, referred to as Boris for the purpose of anonymity, and the history and connection between Velez and other countries. Subramanian’s addition of detail about the economy of Veles and its decline as well as descriptions of other people that made money as Boris did, by posting online, helped bring more context to the story. It helped show how much posting online could help them be more financially stable (or at least supported), and by posting articles that had already been posted, they weren’t necessarily adding to the collection of fake news in the world. They were just spreading it on a larger level. The human contexts about Boris’s daily life such as how he was raised, how he dropped out of high school, how he smokes cigarettes constantly and spends time in various coffee shops helped show how much free time and unemployment and lack of purpose the people in this country may feel, or how people that are unemployed in general across the world may feel, which made the article more relatable. Also, this may have helped the readers be more understanding of where Boris and his friends were coming from in spreading the fake news. Unlike most Americans, they started with nothing (American’s are usually more well off). They got something out of it, and when you have nothing, even a little bit can seem like a lot and be life changing. The angle is that politics are in everything and even people in other countries can impact what is going on in ours. The article also shows how easily people will fall for things - sheep with wool pulled over their eyes, blindly following - and how many people will exploit this ignorance and profit from it by putting in little but diligent work.

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