Translation of the cartoon:
"They cheat you like Spaniards"
The ugly Chinese
In each review of what they have come to call news, I face and blink at many to add them to this list, a large part of which are absurd.
Admittedly, this kind of news causes a furore and is easy quick-click fodder. But there comes a time when they are repeated, some of them become classic hoaxes recurrent and many are suspected of being fattened up, an advertising campaign or just plain fake.
Yesterday El Periódico, and many others, published this news item(screenshot) that makes you laugh.
And no wonder. Jian Feng, a Chinese father, denounces his wife because his children are very ugly. The man discovers that the aforementioned woman had undergone cosmetic operations because she was uglier than a monkey sucking a lemon.
All false, the original image belongs to an advertising campaign of a plastic surgery clinic in Taiwan with a touch of humour. They cut it out and let it fly. In HOAX-SLAYER they explained it two days ago (8 November 2013). A day earlier, Snopes had already done the same.
You were fooled by the Chinese
A Rocket News article in the 24 May 2012 article comments on and translates the text of the image.
"This image is an advertisement for a plastic surgery centre in Taiwan, and you can see that the children in the image look nothing like their parents. The ad features the text: 'The only thing you need to worry about after plastic surgery is the explanation you will have to give your children'."
Original image from the ad campaign
In October 2015, Heidi Yeh, the model involved in that campaign told the whole story in an interview with BBC.
"An internet meme ruined my career."
Old fake news
Anyone reading the ugly Chinese story might think this happened yesterday, or three days ago. But it didn't.
In May 2012 it was published, also in October 2012. And in 2010, and many more times on different dates.
But you only have to search a little to find that the first references to this nonsense dating back to 2004. (Capture)
All this leads me to think that El Periódico doesn't give a damn if it's an alleged news item that's at least 9 years old and they haven't even bothered to do a simple search.
And it's easy for this kind of news to slip through the cracks and spread, for various reasons:
-They happen a long way off, so nobody bothers to confirm that it is not a hoax or if it has been embellished or manipulated along the way. It becomes very difficult to verify it, many don't even try seeing that so many media take it for granted.
-Very few people question the credibility of the sites that publish the story, the source becomes the least important thing.
-It doesn't matter, it has a photo. If it has photos, it's true (even if they are very suspicious of having been tampered with). That's the title of the first chapter of the Internet bible for dummies.
-We are fooled, but we like it.
