Sob Stories

I recently came across a shared link on facebook.  It was one of those sob stories about redemption and forgiveness:

Chinese Link

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=164650366896247&id=160464047312677

English Link

http://novitakaseger.blogspot.com/2009/11/sang-pemerkosa-dan-pendonor-sumsum.html

Touching story complete with moral dilemmas, racial prejudices, rape, forgiveness, redemption, and emotional struggles.  There are dates, names, and even a picture.

The problem is, it never happened.  It’s completely dreamed up.

You see, for weathered, hardened, cynical, and skeptical souls like myself, bullshit detection is already deeply ingrained within.

There is no town called Wayeli in Italy.  In fact, there is no newspaper named “Italian Daily Post” that the ad was supposed to appear in.

In reality, it is unlikely that an employer, in Italy in 1993, instead of firing, would force an black employee to eat shards of a broken dish; that said employee would, instead of going to an ER for internal bleeding (and a lawyer), choose to participate in involuntary sexual activities that results in pregnancy; that said employee would intrinsically have Jean Valjean-like character and be willing to give up a good life and be condemned; that a hospital could discharge a bone marrow transplant patient in one week instead of the 4-8 weeks it normally takes.  The list goes on and on and on.

These are glaring errors that stand out like the Pope at a dildo convention.  Not that it matters; since when did reality get in the way of a good story?

Even if the author did do his/her homework and get the details correct, the thought process, behavior, and rationale described are so deviant from normal humans, that one can only conclude this happened in a parallel universe.

Emotional sob stories are like mental porn; a bit now and then is healthy but too much might make you lose touch with reality, because that’s not how real people act in the real world.  It’s like walking  into a school and expecting to start an orgy with a bunch of teen sluts because that was the title of the film last night.

I have nothing against stories, good or bad, real or fiction.  I do however, have a cow when fiction, especially insultingly bad fiction, is being advertised as true.  That’s as offensive as picking up a cow pie with a twig and telling me it’s a lollipop.