French Press Credibility Questioned after Greatest Facebook Hoax Ever

A third-party Facebook application, aimed at quarterly designating a new "Facebook Worldwide president", made the head news in France after it designated as a winner resident Arash Derambarsh, who campaigned intensively in the weeks allowed. His official program? Tolerance across religions, fighting illiteracy and promoting French culture worldwide. Now, it’s not for certain if he knew it was a make-pretend election or if he thought that it was the real deal, but when the results came in and had his 9k+ votes land him the position (out of a total of 140k+ votes apparently), he started talking to the media and that’s where the whole thing started unfolding.

The main news networks did not check whether this was true and just passed the story on from one to another and, when TV channels took the story and aired it, Arash was suddenly a star with his own Wikipedia page and invitations coming in to talk about his presidency and program. The best and funny part is that he was credible enough to sell his story.

The bubble burst when in his megalomania he said that he has a project with UNESCO and that the company, whose "president" he is, backs him with that. Furthermore, he declares that he was granted a feature when elected that enables him to reach close to a hundred million users, substantially more than the French president himself. No one cared to check whether Facebook indeed has those users (it doesn’t) and nobody cares to ask the FB press department.

The situation could not remain the way it was, but his "untimely demise" came by the hands of his compatriots, the French Facebook users that denounced him and blogged his lies to smithereens. The press was left with their jaw hanging, but were forced to quickly recover in order to keep what little credibility they had left. They chose to do that by saying that Arash misunderstood the situation. Be that as it may, it was you who covered it!