Satire and the Lebanese Self-Image

A few days ago, the Pan Arabia Enquirer, a satirical online newspaper which is the Arab world’s answer to The Onion, wrote one of its typical fake stories: A Lebanese man in Dubai paid $200,000 to guarantee that he’ll be first to get a hold on an iPhone 5 (link).

What’s interesting is what happened next: Mainstream media started picking up the story as if it were real. Naharnet, Emirates 24/7 and Alarabiya English all reposted the story under the assumption that it was true (they all eventually deleted the posts). Today Lebanon Files, a Lebanese news website, actually took the effort to translate the story into Arabic and posted it on its own website as real news. People meanwhile were picking up the story and sharing it all over Twitter and Facebook and believing it to be real.

This episode tells us a lot of things. It tells us that Arabs are still not very used to straight-faced satire. It tells us that Arab media can make an effort to translate articles, but not make an effort to investigate whether they’re real or false. But it also tells us something about the image (and self-image) of the Lebanese.

What many people sharing this story on their timelines were unconsciously saying is: This is extreme, but I believe it. The protagonist (Fadi) conforms to the caricature we have painted of ourselves in our pop culture, of people who love chasing Guinness world records and flaunting their wealth by lighting cigars with $100 bills and paying thousands of dollars for champaign bottles in night clubs.

In a strange way, the Lebanese have a love and hate relationship with Fadi. They are proud of him and admire him — an alpha Lebanese rich guy who is out-Dubaiing Dubai — , but they also despise him and see in him the culmination of everything that has gone wrong with our country. By sharing his story on Facebook (remember, they believe it was real), they get the chance to have it both ways: They happily promote his “achievement”, but at the same time they do it in a way that shows stern disapproval.

Understanding this paradox, this love/hate relationship we have with ourselves, will take you a long way in understanding why the Lebanese do what they do…

Update: This story is getting out of control. I heard from a friend that it made LBC’s prime news at 8pm in the offbeat section.. Fake story makes it to prime time news! this is insane!