I work in immigrant social services here in Canada. I think that concerns about the who-what-how of immigration policy are valid (or certainly can be valid.) Integration is a much more challenging and fraught idea than people may think.
To use a specific example, many Ukrainians came to Alberta and were hired quickly in reasonably well-paid roles relative to other immigrants. However, a huge percentage of my Ukrainian clients were fired within 6 months. When I followed up with the employers I kept hearing the same comments about being “unfriendly” or “cold” or “not a team player.” I watched a few of our Ukrainian arrivals in action to get a sense. Why were they seen as distant?
Basically… they don’t like to smile. Culturally, Canadians smile as a default. Ukrainians and many other Eastern Europeans do not. It’s seen as being a “fool’s smile,” an expression of being stupid or naive. The employers were expecting big, wide, Canadian smiles and the Ukrainians were trying to be professional by NOT appearing as a fool.
This is a small cultural misunderstanding. We talked to the employers, talked to the clients, and have improved their longterm employment outcomes. Win win! But this is such a minor thing from a European culture into a region with historically high Eastern Europeans.
The more distinct people are, the more you need to work to bridge differences.
We have a group of refugees from Eritrea— called Africa’s North Korea because of its degree of repression and state violence. People from Eritrea have almost no shared reference points or common touchstones. (One of my favourite comments: “today I tried a mashed potato!!! American potato like in a MOVIE!!!”) It’s really hard to get someone from Eritrea to be successful in Canada. Kids would get in trouble at school and stand stone still, heads down, sometimes for hours— waiting to get beaten. The teacher is mad because they aren’t responsive; the kid is terrified.
I support immigration and integration. I really believe it can be done. I also believe meaningful and purposeful support is necessary, if we want to have successful multicultural and multiethnic societies.
If they have very low rates of assimilation, they probably shouldn't be there. It's ridiculous to expect a host country to constantly bend over backwards to accommodate people. Get with the program or leave. My ancestors managed to do it, despite the complete lack of social services or immigration counselors or whatever.
Maybe it was different on your case but all my ancestors were able to arrive in the States and weave themselves into preexisting, fairly well-organized, mid-assimilation Jewish communities that shared their languages and cultures. A generation later, we were Americans.
Not everyone has that opportunity. That doesn't mean it should be anything-goes -- just that we can't make apples to oranges comparisons.
Counterexample: Iranian immigrants by and large assimilate very well, despite there being no such communities to weave themselves into in most cases. There was no prominent Persian community in California after 1979 (and it was an actively hostile environment during the hostage crisis), but Iranians managed to immigrate there and not only assimilate, but thrive in terms of income and education.
That's interesting to think about given how large and well-established that diaspora is now.
Off the top of my head: I think after the Revolution it was overhwhelmingly more secular, educated folks who felt the most pressure to flee, right? Plus, selection effects: Who has the resources to get over there? So I would imagine this is a highly educated, secular group coming from one sprawling urbane metropolis (which I think Tehran was before the imams took over) to another. So in some senses, lots of geographical and cultural differences, but in another, they had advantages? Just spitballing, but either way that's a pretty far cry from hopping a boat, landing in, like, Greece, and getting all the way to a place like Norway.
This is why the US is doing better generally re integrating Middle Eastern immigrants, compared to Western Europe, right? Because more of them come on work visas..? So they're more likely to be skilled people who came to work and live their lives...?
True. Irish organizations did something similar in New York for decades. There are still active Jewish organizations who do this in Montreal.
A lot of anti-multiculturalist arguments rail against working with representatives of groups, because gov doesn’t work with reps of white people. I’ve always thought this misses the role of organized identity groups in assimilation.
You have to wonder what the English Puritan founders of Boston would think on seeing the modern city dying the river green to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. Assimilation has always been a two way street; successfully integrated cultures don’t sink without a trace.
it’s so weird to refer to helping people in small ways as “bending over backwards” lol. Like, in this specific example, they noticed a problem, investigated the problem, and found a quick solution. Seems less like “bending over backwards” and more like very easily helping new immigrants assimilate successfully?
Might be crazy but I think helping one’s neighbor is good and important for a functioning society!
"It's so weird to have an opinion about how your community is being affected by anything. Like, if I have a hypothetical problem about my neighborhood, I wouldn't even care, because I'm only living here during college. If my car got broken into, I would just assume that person was in dire need, and anyway why would I care? I have insurance?
Might be crazy, but I... think helping one's neighbor (who isn't my neighbor and definitely won't be in the future) is good and important for a functioning society!
I currently am doing nothing to create or support a functioning society, by the way! But wow, yikes! It's so weird for anyone to not agree with me!"
It depends what you think "in small ways" is. It also depends on who you are consenting to be neighbors with.
Also "it's so weird to" ....etc - is a very tired and lame millennial non-argument used to (unconvincingly) try to discredit anything you don't like, you little fucking baby.
what an insightful comment. if people immigrate to a place, they’re there. It’s a reality whether people like it or not. Assimilation is good and a solution to potential problems.
Sweetheart - people here are discussing whether or not it's a great idea to keep having a bunch of immigrants move into our country. And AKI is pointing out that, at some point we should get to decide whether we want them or not.
If my government forces unwanted neighbors on me, I'm not going to try that hard to support it. No matter how much they want to push it for "the economy".
Assimilating can take a while. My Italian grandmother was born in 1920 - she lived through Italians going from being "ethnic" to being white, from having a weird language and weird culture to being celebrated and an essential part of "american." Same with my eastern european ancestors, and Irish ancestors. There are huge tensions, especially when you have people from much more conservative places coming to western countries, but it takes a while. The issue of assimilation exists within whites as well - think of the orthodox jews in New York, or the fundamentalist christian sects that essentially isolate their communities from the rest of society.
The Swedish (and European) experience seem to belie everything you’re saying in your final paragraph.
It was deeply frustrating to hear the “it’s complicated” line being trotted out during this episode when it’s abundantly clear that the new arrivals are not integrating and are in fact responsible for a historically massive jump in violent crime.
“Be nice and don’t make people sad :) “ is turning out to be a disastrous omnibus policy.
That’s not what I’m arguing at all. Integration work is intense and constant and granular. Many people say “oh well just don’t admit immigrants,” but the fact is, people are here. Similarly, passivity is a failed plan.
The experience in many European countries is, in part, because of a very laissez faire policy structure in place once arrivals are in-country. If the policy is “I don’t want to spend money, I don’t want to acknowledge this, these brutes will realize how lovely it is to be European on their own,” it will fail spectacularly.
The worst case is probably France, which Jessie briefly mentioned. France never made an effort to integrate the Algerians after the collapse of the 4th republic; that was decades ago, and it still stalks the country. There are multi-generational families born in France who are entirely apart from the rest of French society. This is a dangerous thing for social unity and for the health of society. If they continue to do nothing, it will get worse. So what is to be done? Stand outside and tut, or invest in the difficult work of integration?
Given that morality is subjective, I would agree with you with the caveat that we should acknowledge cultural morals *which are incompatible with those of the host country*.
You can talk at me all day about how morality is subjective, and you will never convince me that putting women in bags and banning homosexuality are anything but moral mistakes made by ethical ignoramuses, who are simply wrong about the world. If I went to Afghanistan and did everything in my power to empower women, I would be morally justified in doing so, regardless of the stupid, backwards culture of the host country. No, much if not most of morality is not this simple. But some is. Some is, *obviously.*
I would say that in the French case the bad integration has to do with how Algerians were treated and regarded throughout our long colonial history. I don't think integrating them was a priority or even thought about as a worthy political goal until recently (1990s-2000s), and even then there was the hijab panic which we never got rid of.
I'm always baffled by the difference in policing between France and countries like Germany and the UK in those matters because they seem to have way less cultural racism than we do and there are prominent examples of there being too much political correctness on those issues, when we actually have a racist police than vote massively for the far-right and constantly cover their asses in the numerous cases of police violence we've seen during the last decade. The Parisian police under wartime collaborator Maurice Papon threw people into the Seine during a protest against the pro-colonial clandestine organization OAS during the Algerian War in 1962. It wasn't *that* long ago. A cultural reckoning with our past colonial crimes hasn't really happened outside of lefty activist and academic spaces, much less in our police force, and the political right is still very strong in media and governement (see center-right journalist Jean-Michel Aphatie's recent eviction from RTL after what he said about France's routine massacres in Algeria). So while there definitely are cultural incompatibilities involved in the immigration-integration process, I would say that there is in certain cases (like ours) more work to do than just bridging differences, even if this is a very laudable and necessary part of it.
The behaviour of the Norwegian media in this case reminds me of the behavior of the Canadian media when certain narratives collapse - they never admit they were wrong or print a substantial correction. Years ago Blocked and Reported did an episode on the Canadian Indigenous Residential School "mass graves" story - where hundreds of ground radar anomalies all over Canada that could literally be anything were immediately declared to be Indigenous children that were murdered in Residential Schools and Canada went through an orgy of media driven self-flagellation. Except months later (at the time) and now years later not a single body was confirmed. The one and only attempt at excavation found at one site found nothing. During the episode Jesse was like "wow this is really going to cause a reckoning in Canadian media" - well I can inform you that it 100% did not cause any reckoning in Canadian media. It is still completely verboten in Canadian media to mention the fact that not a single body has been found and anyone that does so is dismissed as alt-right or a genocide denier. Any new ground radar findings are still immediately reported as "plausible graves" by the media and implied that they're probably murder victims but excavation or further investigation is never attempted.
My coworkers still talk about the reckoning with the school graveyards thing like it was all verified.
The one complicating thing is that nearly everyone agrees that the schools were horrible and plenty of folks died there. So the defenders can just say it highlights something true even if wrong. (I hate this kind of argument: it’s important to be able to calibrate the truth, which was evil enough without fake or already known graves)
Yes, I tried to mention the no bodies found thing to some progressive friends and they simply refused to accept this information. They were absolutely convinced that this whole time there was a massive investigation going on with hundreds if not thousands of remains recovered and verified as Residential School victims. I had to drop it and I'm sure they still believe that today.
And just as you say, the few times I've seen this addressed in the media they use another tactic which relies on the fact that Residential Schools were indeed very bad - when some prominent person dares to publicly mentions that no bodies were found as a result of the ground radar signals, they get that Sean Carleton guy on to say "That is absolutely false. We know Indigenous children died in these schools" which is true but the first person wasn't questioning that.
My favorite part of the Canada grave story of that there genuinely thought that they could say "You can't dig them up" and modern technology would have nooo other way to detect human remains. Like the character in this story trying to falsify evidence. Just oblivious.
After the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, we had a bunch of similar stories. My two favourites are Dany Machado, a 17-year-old who participated in "France Got Talent" and sang in tribute to his best friend Alexandre, a minor supposedly slain at the Bataclan, before it came out that the only minor killed at the concert hall that night was 17-year-old Lola, and that no person named Alexandre had died that night, and the absolutely INSANE story of "Flo Kitty", an incredibly online person who managed to lie her way to the board of the biggest victim's association and who had half a dozen of sock puppet accounts of her supposed injured best friend and her American rock star partner also participating in the Facebook support group of the association. That story was an absolute wild ride, if I were an interesting personality I'd go on BARPOD to talk about it because it truly hits all the Blocked and Reported buttons.
Thanks for that tip! I just googled Flo Kitty, seems like there's a HBO max documentary that I will now have to dig for on the internet! 😀
As it happens, I have recently watched the documentary about Tania Head, a fake 9/11 survivor with an invented dead fiancé referenced in this episode by the guest. It's on YouTube for anyone interested, worth a watch!
I believe the HBO Max thing is a fictionalised limited series, not a documentary. My favourite piece of media made about the story is this longform video made by French YouTuber Liv but it's all in French of course. Well worth a watch if you understand the language: https://youtu.be/_hczvcOPkmo?si=Vg5j0DHaSrNBMbIv
Maybe I'm going to hell for thinking this, but when the story began I thought for sure that this story would end with Nikita turning out to be a Rachel Dolezal. Like, she'd end up being able-bodied white woman wearing a hijab and a ton of bronzer. It wouldn't be the first time on Barpod.
She was desperately disappointed that she didn't get to share on the victim points even though she was *so close.* So she said eh, close enough, and claimed them anyway.
Observation: Jesse’s episodes are interesting because you can tell he’s uncomfortable in his chair because he’s always shifting in his seat to accommodate his gigantic penis which he downplays and instead presents his smartboi energy to the people and for that I am thankful. Also he’s always super sweet with his guests and i never leave an episode not knowing more.
I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for this woman. Don’t get me wrong, she did a bad thing, but I can absolutely imagine making up a story for clout, which goes unexpectedly viral, and at every point she thinks “well, I can’t possibly tell everyone I made it up” so she spirals deeper and deeper into it, and it’s always easier to lie a little bit more than to tell everyone the truth. I find the idea of all that psychological stress fascinating and horrifying to think about.
I too made up (extremely inconsequential) stories for clout when I was a dumb teenager, and I guess I feel really lucky that none of those stories were on the internet and also none of them happened to resonate with a national reckoning narrative.
When I was six or seven, I told everyone in my class that I was adopted from Russia, and the orphanage I came from was terrible, "like the one from Annie". Wracked with guilt a few nights later, I confided in my mom, who told my dad. He grabbed the school directory and told me to call the home phone of every kid I had told the lie to, so I could correct myself. I made it through a few phone calls to confused parents before my mom told me I could stop. It definitely instilled a major fear of lying, unless I was 100% sure I could get away with it.
WRT the "control of the information..." quote around 16 minutes, in Norwegian "kontroll" does mean "control," but it also means something like "verification" or "inspection." So they are basically just admitting that the paper didn't do due diligence, but not in a specific way.
I work in immigrant social services here in Canada. I think that concerns about the who-what-how of immigration policy are valid (or certainly can be valid.) Integration is a much more challenging and fraught idea than people may think.
To use a specific example, many Ukrainians came to Alberta and were hired quickly in reasonably well-paid roles relative to other immigrants. However, a huge percentage of my Ukrainian clients were fired within 6 months. When I followed up with the employers I kept hearing the same comments about being “unfriendly” or “cold” or “not a team player.” I watched a few of our Ukrainian arrivals in action to get a sense. Why were they seen as distant?
Basically… they don’t like to smile. Culturally, Canadians smile as a default. Ukrainians and many other Eastern Europeans do not. It’s seen as being a “fool’s smile,” an expression of being stupid or naive. The employers were expecting big, wide, Canadian smiles and the Ukrainians were trying to be professional by NOT appearing as a fool.
This is a small cultural misunderstanding. We talked to the employers, talked to the clients, and have improved their longterm employment outcomes. Win win! But this is such a minor thing from a European culture into a region with historically high Eastern Europeans.
The more distinct people are, the more you need to work to bridge differences.
We have a group of refugees from Eritrea— called Africa’s North Korea because of its degree of repression and state violence. People from Eritrea have almost no shared reference points or common touchstones. (One of my favourite comments: “today I tried a mashed potato!!! American potato like in a MOVIE!!!”) It’s really hard to get someone from Eritrea to be successful in Canada. Kids would get in trouble at school and stand stone still, heads down, sometimes for hours— waiting to get beaten. The teacher is mad because they aren’t responsive; the kid is terrified.
I support immigration and integration. I really believe it can be done. I also believe meaningful and purposeful support is necessary, if we want to have successful multicultural and multiethnic societies.
If they have very low rates of assimilation, they probably shouldn't be there. It's ridiculous to expect a host country to constantly bend over backwards to accommodate people. Get with the program or leave. My ancestors managed to do it, despite the complete lack of social services or immigration counselors or whatever.
Maybe it was different on your case but all my ancestors were able to arrive in the States and weave themselves into preexisting, fairly well-organized, mid-assimilation Jewish communities that shared their languages and cultures. A generation later, we were Americans.
Not everyone has that opportunity. That doesn't mean it should be anything-goes -- just that we can't make apples to oranges comparisons.
Counterexample: Iranian immigrants by and large assimilate very well, despite there being no such communities to weave themselves into in most cases. There was no prominent Persian community in California after 1979 (and it was an actively hostile environment during the hostage crisis), but Iranians managed to immigrate there and not only assimilate, but thrive in terms of income and education.
That's interesting to think about given how large and well-established that diaspora is now.
Off the top of my head: I think after the Revolution it was overhwhelmingly more secular, educated folks who felt the most pressure to flee, right? Plus, selection effects: Who has the resources to get over there? So I would imagine this is a highly educated, secular group coming from one sprawling urbane metropolis (which I think Tehran was before the imams took over) to another. So in some senses, lots of geographical and cultural differences, but in another, they had advantages? Just spitballing, but either way that's a pretty far cry from hopping a boat, landing in, like, Greece, and getting all the way to a place like Norway.
This is why the US is doing better generally re integrating Middle Eastern immigrants, compared to Western Europe, right? Because more of them come on work visas..? So they're more likely to be skilled people who came to work and live their lives...?
True. Irish organizations did something similar in New York for decades. There are still active Jewish organizations who do this in Montreal.
A lot of anti-multiculturalist arguments rail against working with representatives of groups, because gov doesn’t work with reps of white people. I’ve always thought this misses the role of organized identity groups in assimilation.
You have to wonder what the English Puritan founders of Boston would think on seeing the modern city dying the river green to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. Assimilation has always been a two way street; successfully integrated cultures don’t sink without a trace.
it’s so weird to refer to helping people in small ways as “bending over backwards” lol. Like, in this specific example, they noticed a problem, investigated the problem, and found a quick solution. Seems less like “bending over backwards” and more like very easily helping new immigrants assimilate successfully?
Might be crazy but I think helping one’s neighbor is good and important for a functioning society!
"It's so weird to have an opinion about how your community is being affected by anything. Like, if I have a hypothetical problem about my neighborhood, I wouldn't even care, because I'm only living here during college. If my car got broken into, I would just assume that person was in dire need, and anyway why would I care? I have insurance?
Might be crazy, but I... think helping one's neighbor (who isn't my neighbor and definitely won't be in the future) is good and important for a functioning society!
I currently am doing nothing to create or support a functioning society, by the way! But wow, yikes! It's so weird for anyone to not agree with me!"
It depends what you think "in small ways" is. It also depends on who you are consenting to be neighbors with.
Also "it's so weird to" ....etc - is a very tired and lame millennial non-argument used to (unconvincingly) try to discredit anything you don't like, you little fucking baby.
But they don't have to be one's neighbour. That is literally the choice at hand.
what an insightful comment. if people immigrate to a place, they’re there. It’s a reality whether people like it or not. Assimilation is good and a solution to potential problems.
Sweetheart - people here are discussing whether or not it's a great idea to keep having a bunch of immigrants move into our country. And AKI is pointing out that, at some point we should get to decide whether we want them or not.
If my government forces unwanted neighbors on me, I'm not going to try that hard to support it. No matter how much they want to push it for "the economy".
Assimilating can take a while. My Italian grandmother was born in 1920 - she lived through Italians going from being "ethnic" to being white, from having a weird language and weird culture to being celebrated and an essential part of "american." Same with my eastern european ancestors, and Irish ancestors. There are huge tensions, especially when you have people from much more conservative places coming to western countries, but it takes a while. The issue of assimilation exists within whites as well - think of the orthodox jews in New York, or the fundamentalist christian sects that essentially isolate their communities from the rest of society.
The Swedish (and European) experience seem to belie everything you’re saying in your final paragraph.
It was deeply frustrating to hear the “it’s complicated” line being trotted out during this episode when it’s abundantly clear that the new arrivals are not integrating and are in fact responsible for a historically massive jump in violent crime.
“Be nice and don’t make people sad :) “ is turning out to be a disastrous omnibus policy.
That’s not what I’m arguing at all. Integration work is intense and constant and granular. Many people say “oh well just don’t admit immigrants,” but the fact is, people are here. Similarly, passivity is a failed plan.
The experience in many European countries is, in part, because of a very laissez faire policy structure in place once arrivals are in-country. If the policy is “I don’t want to spend money, I don’t want to acknowledge this, these brutes will realize how lovely it is to be European on their own,” it will fail spectacularly.
The worst case is probably France, which Jessie briefly mentioned. France never made an effort to integrate the Algerians after the collapse of the 4th republic; that was decades ago, and it still stalks the country. There are multi-generational families born in France who are entirely apart from the rest of French society. This is a dangerous thing for social unity and for the health of society. If they continue to do nothing, it will get worse. So what is to be done? Stand outside and tut, or invest in the difficult work of integration?
Snubbing your nose is free, but it’s useless.
Stopping the lying about all cultures being equally morally valid would be a great start. We can't even seem to do that.
Given that morality is subjective, I would agree with you with the caveat that we should acknowledge cultural morals *which are incompatible with those of the host country*.
You can talk at me all day about how morality is subjective, and you will never convince me that putting women in bags and banning homosexuality are anything but moral mistakes made by ethical ignoramuses, who are simply wrong about the world. If I went to Afghanistan and did everything in my power to empower women, I would be morally justified in doing so, regardless of the stupid, backwards culture of the host country. No, much if not most of morality is not this simple. But some is. Some is, *obviously.*
Um people can be sent back. Or held to the same standards as everyone else. Weird idea.
I would say that in the French case the bad integration has to do with how Algerians were treated and regarded throughout our long colonial history. I don't think integrating them was a priority or even thought about as a worthy political goal until recently (1990s-2000s), and even then there was the hijab panic which we never got rid of.
I'm always baffled by the difference in policing between France and countries like Germany and the UK in those matters because they seem to have way less cultural racism than we do and there are prominent examples of there being too much political correctness on those issues, when we actually have a racist police than vote massively for the far-right and constantly cover their asses in the numerous cases of police violence we've seen during the last decade. The Parisian police under wartime collaborator Maurice Papon threw people into the Seine during a protest against the pro-colonial clandestine organization OAS during the Algerian War in 1962. It wasn't *that* long ago. A cultural reckoning with our past colonial crimes hasn't really happened outside of lefty activist and academic spaces, much less in our police force, and the political right is still very strong in media and governement (see center-right journalist Jean-Michel Aphatie's recent eviction from RTL after what he said about France's routine massacres in Algeria). So while there definitely are cultural incompatibilities involved in the immigration-integration process, I would say that there is in certain cases (like ours) more work to do than just bridging differences, even if this is a very laudable and necessary part of it.
Oh, integration and assimilation? You mean CULTURAL GENOCIDE?
I stand with LJ and,begrudgingly in this case, Canada. Well thought out concerns and solutions. 💯. Just kidding on Canada thing.
They probably have an easier time in parts of Europe where there isn't a smile culture either. Or in jobs where you don't have to work with customers.
The behaviour of the Norwegian media in this case reminds me of the behavior of the Canadian media when certain narratives collapse - they never admit they were wrong or print a substantial correction. Years ago Blocked and Reported did an episode on the Canadian Indigenous Residential School "mass graves" story - where hundreds of ground radar anomalies all over Canada that could literally be anything were immediately declared to be Indigenous children that were murdered in Residential Schools and Canada went through an orgy of media driven self-flagellation. Except months later (at the time) and now years later not a single body was confirmed. The one and only attempt at excavation found at one site found nothing. During the episode Jesse was like "wow this is really going to cause a reckoning in Canadian media" - well I can inform you that it 100% did not cause any reckoning in Canadian media. It is still completely verboten in Canadian media to mention the fact that not a single body has been found and anyone that does so is dismissed as alt-right or a genocide denier. Any new ground radar findings are still immediately reported as "plausible graves" by the media and implied that they're probably murder victims but excavation or further investigation is never attempted.
My coworkers still talk about the reckoning with the school graveyards thing like it was all verified.
The one complicating thing is that nearly everyone agrees that the schools were horrible and plenty of folks died there. So the defenders can just say it highlights something true even if wrong. (I hate this kind of argument: it’s important to be able to calibrate the truth, which was evil enough without fake or already known graves)
Yes, I tried to mention the no bodies found thing to some progressive friends and they simply refused to accept this information. They were absolutely convinced that this whole time there was a massive investigation going on with hundreds if not thousands of remains recovered and verified as Residential School victims. I had to drop it and I'm sure they still believe that today.
And just as you say, the few times I've seen this addressed in the media they use another tactic which relies on the fact that Residential Schools were indeed very bad - when some prominent person dares to publicly mentions that no bodies were found as a result of the ground radar signals, they get that Sean Carleton guy on to say "That is absolutely false. We know Indigenous children died in these schools" which is true but the first person wasn't questioning that.
fake but accurate!
"At least we started a conversation."
Meanwhile churches are on fire.
Churches often primarily visited by First Nations people.
My favorite part of the Canada grave story of that there genuinely thought that they could say "You can't dig them up" and modern technology would have nooo other way to detect human remains. Like the character in this story trying to falsify evidence. Just oblivious.
After the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, we had a bunch of similar stories. My two favourites are Dany Machado, a 17-year-old who participated in "France Got Talent" and sang in tribute to his best friend Alexandre, a minor supposedly slain at the Bataclan, before it came out that the only minor killed at the concert hall that night was 17-year-old Lola, and that no person named Alexandre had died that night, and the absolutely INSANE story of "Flo Kitty", an incredibly online person who managed to lie her way to the board of the biggest victim's association and who had half a dozen of sock puppet accounts of her supposed injured best friend and her American rock star partner also participating in the Facebook support group of the association. That story was an absolute wild ride, if I were an interesting personality I'd go on BARPOD to talk about it because it truly hits all the Blocked and Reported buttons.
Send it as a tip! Sounds like a good BARPod story.
Thanks for that tip! I just googled Flo Kitty, seems like there's a HBO max documentary that I will now have to dig for on the internet! 😀
As it happens, I have recently watched the documentary about Tania Head, a fake 9/11 survivor with an invented dead fiancé referenced in this episode by the guest. It's on YouTube for anyone interested, worth a watch!
I believe the HBO Max thing is a fictionalised limited series, not a documentary. My favourite piece of media made about the story is this longform video made by French YouTuber Liv but it's all in French of course. Well worth a watch if you understand the language: https://youtu.be/_hczvcOPkmo?si=Vg5j0DHaSrNBMbIv
YouTube audio translation (ai) is now quite good
Sadly, I don't understand French, but I'll watch it with English captions on YouTube, imperfect as they are. Thanks :)
The HBO max mini series is a fictionalised version of the events, and I thought it was very engaging. I can recommend it.
I second this!
Vous m'apprenez quelque chose. I never heard about these stories, I'm probably not online enough. They do sound appropriately insane for BARpod!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/steve-rannazzisi-explains-lied-911/story%3Fid%3D34296631&ved=2ahUKEwjIstGMvbKMAxVVOUQIHZ_BFi4QFnoECFQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2J5Qfk9IBPbTx_oLLIQ2jd
This is the standup comedian who lied about being at the Twin Towers for 14 years.
These are my favorite kinds of BaRPod stories. Hoping they pick this one up!
Interesting guest, fascinating serious discussion at the beginning, classic internet drama at the end. Thanks, Jesse and Espen!
Ooo nice to see a fellow Norwegian on the podcast! I’ve been following him for many years now here in Norway. Good guy:)
This Norwegian-American loved listening to him speak—he sounded like all my older relatives!
Maybe I'm going to hell for thinking this, but when the story began I thought for sure that this story would end with Nikita turning out to be a Rachel Dolezal. Like, she'd end up being able-bodied white woman wearing a hijab and a ton of bronzer. It wouldn't be the first time on Barpod.
I was waiting for that as well, and I don't feel bad for wondering. Anything's up for grabs when the pile of lies starts to fall apart.
It all seemed to be building up to a moment where it turned out that she got out of her wheelchair and ran from the club.
My first thought was Nikita was not female, not Muslim, not disabled. The trifecta. Lie-fecta. See you in Hell! I'll bring cookies.
No that's what I was thinking, too, at some point.
I do think Espen made a valid point about over associating with a tragedy to to point of needing to live as if you had experienced them.
Celebrity deaths are a resonant example of this, I think.
I think people do it with identities too (I care so deeply for the minorities, I must be non binary queer etc. too).
But that internet search is as good a piece of evidence that she understood this up and down to be the wrong thing to do.
She was desperately disappointed that she didn't get to share on the victim points even though she was *so close.* So she said eh, close enough, and claimed them anyway.
Observation: Jesse’s episodes are interesting because you can tell he’s uncomfortable in his chair because he’s always shifting in his seat to accommodate his gigantic penis which he downplays and instead presents his smartboi energy to the people and for that I am thankful. Also he’s always super sweet with his guests and i never leave an episode not knowing more.
Jesse, I just noticed your piece for the NYTimes is back on the home page at an even more prominent place. Saturday afternoon.
From most hated man on Bluesky to front and center on the NYT homepage in under a hundred days. There must be method to his madness after all.
A delightful episode as always. My favorite kind of episode, really. I just love hearing about people lying about the most insane things.
One of the many guilty pleasures I listen to it for. It's a bit like diet true crime for me.
I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for this woman. Don’t get me wrong, she did a bad thing, but I can absolutely imagine making up a story for clout, which goes unexpectedly viral, and at every point she thinks “well, I can’t possibly tell everyone I made it up” so she spirals deeper and deeper into it, and it’s always easier to lie a little bit more than to tell everyone the truth. I find the idea of all that psychological stress fascinating and horrifying to think about.
I too made up (extremely inconsequential) stories for clout when I was a dumb teenager, and I guess I feel really lucky that none of those stories were on the internet and also none of them happened to resonate with a national reckoning narrative.
When I was six or seven, I told everyone in my class that I was adopted from Russia, and the orphanage I came from was terrible, "like the one from Annie". Wracked with guilt a few nights later, I confided in my mom, who told my dad. He grabbed the school directory and told me to call the home phone of every kid I had told the lie to, so I could correct myself. I made it through a few phone calls to confused parents before my mom told me I could stop. It definitely instilled a major fear of lying, unless I was 100% sure I could get away with it.
Your dad was tough!
For the record, I am neither adopted nor Russian.
Really enjoyed this episode - great contributor. Let’s have more of this from the rest of Europe & beyond.
Great show. Please have Espen on again.
Also, this guy needs to come back and give us the low down on what the hell is going on with Norway’s royal family.
>gets shot
>somehow doesn't feel pain at all and needs to be called to be told you've been shot
I smelled BS from that moment on.
I think adrenaline can mask the pain of a sudden trauma to some extent for a little while, but of course not that long.
Yes. I have heard from many gunshot victims that the pain was not immediate.
Not for that long
Two kilometers in a wheelchair for me
WRT the "control of the information..." quote around 16 minutes, in Norwegian "kontroll" does mean "control," but it also means something like "verification" or "inspection." So they are basically just admitting that the paper didn't do due diligence, but not in a specific way.