The Chernobyl Biker That Wasn't Now you're making me nostalgic for bonsai kitten.I thought this biker chick, barreling around the radioactive no-man’s lands, alone, on her Kawasaki would be a great character for my book. But when I asked Rimma Kyselytsia, a zone guide, about her, she said it was all a lie. Elena had never ridden a motorcycle in the zone. “Elena’s” name was, in fact, Lena Filatova and she visited the zone for the first time – in a car and not a motorcycle – two weeks after the original website appeared.
And everyone in the zone was pissed off about it. Officials demanded to know who let Elena ride around on a motorcycle, which isn’t allowed. Producers wanting to make movies about Elena’s “heroism” pestered Rimma with phone calls. Confused checkpoint guards had to turn back Norwegian biology teachers on bicycles who wanted unlimited passes like Elena’s. But it was all fiction – and a fun story I ended up doing for the Los Angeles Times.
I also read that she didn't in fact bike through the area, which is a shame. However the images and story that she tells is powerful with or without the bike. Sometimes, the bigger truth is revealed through fiction. The photos and the horror of Chernobyl is true - the "biker" vehicle is just fiction.
Is it compelling? Certainly. Did I read it with bated breath in 2004? Absolutely. But it's a fiction. Keep in mind - this is a story about Chernobyl written by a person who has only visited Chernobyl once - after he wrote it. 5 Easy Pieces was pretty inspirational, too - and also a lie. Fiction should be judged by the standards of fiction, and non-fiction should be judged by the standards of non-fiction… and it's not like there isn't compelling non-fiction about Chernobyl. Here's Boston.com's Big Picture 25th anniversary retrospective. I'm all about narrative devices. However, "lying" is pretty far down the list for me. And perhaps it's because I grew up in Los Alamos, NM, where every hippie on the planet goes to sneak under one fence and shoot a documentary going "whoa! We're, like, radioactive!" when in fact they're getting in the way of my hiking… but if you're going to write about something as solemnly important as Chernobyl, tell the fucking truth.After my story about Lena appeared , kiddofspeed was amended to admit to some “poetry”. But for years afterwards, words waged over whether it mattered if the motorcycle story was true, since the photos were real and the website drew global attention to Chernobyl. A thread discussing it on an urban explorer forum got nearly 200,000 views. It was then that I realized that for many people, even if they knew that kiddofspeed was a hoax, it was “true enough”.
And so, long after the debunking and the debates have died down, and their discussion board threads archived, the Chernobyl biker chick endures. People still mention her to me and are surprised to hear that it was a hoax, even seven years later after the fraud was exposed. Google “Chernobyl” and kiddofspeed is right there, on the first page, though I would not recommend using it as a scientific guide but rather as a symbol of what can pass for truth on the web.
This truth/lies/fiction/storytelling conversation reminds me of the This American Life / Mike Daisey Story from a couple years ago. There, mk makes a similar point to the one you are making: that there are stories that don't need to be embellished to make the audience sit up and pay attention. The truth is powerful enough. But for some reason, I don't think a story about coal mines would have gotten the same amount of attention. Two years ago, news about Foxconn spread like wildfire and everyone knew that name. Similarly, your National Geographic link or Boston.com didn't go intensely viral either. Does the fact that if it told a different story - one that were true - it wouldn't have gotten that level of attention change the fact that it is wrong to lie in this way? I don't think so. However, perhaps it gives some insight into the motivation behind the half-truth stories. For that reason, I think we will continue to see them and be affected by them.China has real problems. Had Daisey visited coal mines, especially illegal ones, he probably wouldn't have had to embellish much to pull at American's heartstrings. However, he didn't do that. He visited Foxconn, and said that it was much worse than it was. I haven't been to Foxconn. However, my impression is that it is far from the worst example of working conditions in China.
Well here's where it gets interesting. So we're talking about an ends-justify-means scenario here. But what are the ends? FoxConn is a safer place to work. However, FoxConn was already a safer place to work than Chinese coal mines, which kill several people per day without the world batting an eye. What about Jayson Blair? On Jessica Lynch, Blair used a bunch of purple prose to play up the Rockwellian universe in which she'd grown up; in the end, Jessica Lynch ended up with a lot more limelight, something she definitely didn't want. Did it shorten the war? Now - how 'bout Chernobyl? Did an imaginary story about a hot biker speed up the cleanup? Did it lower cancer rates? Did it increase medical funding? No, but it "raised awareness." Not so much of Chernobyl as a disaster, but as a background where spoiled exotics go on urban explorations. In the popular mindset, kidofspeed nudged Chernobyl away from "historic thing that happened in the Cold War" to "cool abandoned theme park to get stoned in." The movie Chernobyl Diaries doesn't happen without that Angelfire page. So let's go to something a little muddier, like Janet Cooke. Read this and know that it was made up wholesale. She got a pulitzer for it: Here's what Bob Woodward had to say: "It is a brilliant story—fake and fraud that it is. It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes." The article definitely raised awareness of the drug problem in DC. It influenced drug policy in the United States in general, though - The War On Drugs, the imaginary "Crack Epidemic", the rise of the paramilitary DEA, all of it. Now - there probably were 8-year-old heroin addicts at the time of its writing. But their stories didn't get told. Which means all that influence is the influence of a lie. That, fundamentally, is why we require our true stories to be true. That is why we accord more respect to nonfictional accounts than we do fictionalizations. For every story you make up and pretend to be true, you are ignoring a story that actually IS true and the truth is far more valuable in setting policy than opportunistic narration. Joseph Kony is still at large, and he's still not even vaguely the nastiest dictator in Africa. "Going viral" is a far cry from "doing something" and even when it does, if it isn't true, it's harmful. My opinion anyway. There's far too much extant injustice in the world to get hung up on made up shit. And frankly? If I'm going to read a made-up story about a Russian chick who rides her Ninja around Chernobyl, it'd better be way more fucking AWESOME than kidofspeed. If you're gonna fake it, put your goddamn back into it. Holden Caulfield is way the fuck more awesome than James Frey.But for some reason, I don't think a story about coal mines would have gotten the same amount of attention.
Cooke resigned and returned the Prize. (It was awarded to Teresa Carpenter of The Village Voice.) She appeared on the Phil Donahue show in January 1982 and said that the high-pressure environment of the Post had corrupted her judgment. She said that her sources had hinted to her about the existence of a boy such as Jimmy, but unable to find him, she eventually created a story about him in order to satisfy her editors.
I believed it, we published it. Official questions had been raised, but we stood by the story and her. Internal questions had been raised, but none about her other work. The reports were about the story not sounding right, being based on anonymous sources, and primarily about purported lies [about] her personal life – [told by three reporters], two she had dated and one who felt in close competition with her. I think that the decision to nominate the story for a Pulitzer is of minimal consequence. I also think that it won is of little consequence. It is a brilliant story—fake and fraud that it is. It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes.
I guess we are. But, I don't think that "raising awareness" is a valid excuse for making up stories or flat out lying. It's just that, for me, it takes a little off the evilness of the lying. I look at the authors/lies a little differently if it was done to raise awareness than if it was done for fun or to maliciously harm someone or for the author's own sadistic pleasure. I agree with this 100%. You obviously know much more about this particular stories and others. From my perspective as someone who is slightly educated about Chernobyl and has no interest in bikes, this story shed light on something that I knew little about. I really didn't care about the bike part as much as I did about the photographs and the story. So while you look at this story and others as part of a larger part of your knowledge on the subject, on writing, and on bikers, I look at it as something that sparked a long moment of entertainment and fascination. I read the entirety of the wikipedia link on Chernobyland Roentgens while reading her story. That's one of the key features of the internet that I love: instant delivery of education about random topics I wouldn't otherwise learn about. So for me this delivered exactly what I wanted. To you, the story didn't deliver or the extending circumstances diminished heavily from the story because you care and know about a lot more than me. You know about writing. You know about bike culture. You know about the impact this story had on how other pieces of non-fiction are judged. You know about the story that wasn't told. You know about the fact that this story made a bunch of people turning into wannabe radiation-humping badasses. Now that I've had this conversation with you, I care about those things too. I understand the negative impact a story like this can have on all sorts of things. Fake or overly embellished stories cause more harm than good in the end. While they can be educating and fascinating, they should be called out for their flaws so that we don't end up in a world where they are accepted. We should continue to differentiate between fiction and non-fiction in the strictest sense because if we don't we won't be able to tell whether we read something real or fake. I don't want to live in a world where we are overly skeptical of everything we read because of incidents like this. For some reason, while writing this, my mind keeps going back to reddit. This exact thing has happened on reddit to the detriment of actual true stories. It is nearly impossible to read anything over there because every story is read with the perception that it probably isn't true. This takes away from the emotional ride of reading a great piece of writing but also has caused great harm (doxxing, shunning, etc) to people with real conditions or stories that should be heard about. You can't read about someone's cancer experience anymore because of the overly skeptical nature of reddit. Not that I want a bunch of cancer sob stories. But that kind of sucks.So we're talking about an ends-justify-means scenario here.
There's far too much extant injustice in the world to get hung up on made up shit. And frankly? If I'm going to read a made-up story about a Russian chick who rides her Ninja around Chernobyl, it'd better be way more fucking AWESOME than kidofspeed.
This is an interesting and valuable discussion and I thank you for it. If I may, I'd like to highlight a few things. First, your perspective: And when I first read it, it was fucking awesome. It does spark research and pursuit of other aspects of the story and you're right - that's one of the best things about the Internet. People talk about the gravitational field of TVTropes and how accidentally clicking a link can suck down five hours. I have a friend who once missed a dinner date because Wikipedia. The Hitchhiker's Guide is real and it is marvelous. But let's look at your perception of my perception: That's just close enough to the truth to be dangerous, and just far enough away to miss the point. To me, the story is a lost opportunity because, at my level of understanding, the jumping-off points are false. If something is real, it's a value to everyone: if you know a little you're exposed to the broad links it provides. If you know a lot, it likely gives you a different perspective, raises things you haven't considered before, may give you somewhere to look that you haven't peered into. But if something is fake, it will snow the people who only know a little while calling those who know a lot liars. There aren't a lot of jumping off points for me with kidofspeed because it reflects a layman's understanding of Pripyat. I already have a layman's understanding of Pripyat. If I want to go look up something else, I'm not going to find it here - I may even get sent down a wild goose chase where the only links I can find are self-referential. It's a false signpost in a forest. And that's the thing about true stories: they keep on giving. They can be told from many perspectives. We can revisit them with new information and gain new understanding. A work of fiction is, necessarily, one author's perspective and that in and of itself is marvelous. Paint me a picture, by all means and give me your artistry. But when that painting is presented as a window… well, it's like a Hollywood set. It looks great from six feet away, but it reflect's a set decorator's notion of the Old West, not the environment Butch Cassidy actually lived in. Thinking about it now, that is the value of fiction for fiction's sake and fact for fact's sake. With fiction, we value the perspective of the narrator and know that it is our only entry into their world. With fact, we value the perspective of the narrator and know that they are providing one particular insight about an event that touched many. There's applicability to the lives of others in the tale of Burt Munro. Yeah, he'll be Anthony Hopkins for the rest of time but he was also a genuine, crotchety old Kiwi. The perspective World's Fastest Indian gives me on Burt Munro is but one facet, one presentation of a real person - and if I want to dig deeper, I can find others. I can learn more. I can become an expert. Elena whatsername? Well, as fictional characters go, she's awfully thin and one-dimensional. I think, more than anything, it's the missed opportunity that bugs me the most. If there had been an actual person writing about sneaking into Chernobyl, we might have learned something real from them. Instead, we learn what some bored gearhead thinks about Chernobyl. Nothing wrong with that, but by presenting conjecture as fact he casts aspersions over all other facts. On a related note, I have a recommendation for you. The chapter on Chernobyl is almost, but not quite, as interesting as the chapter on Cyprus.I look at it as something that sparked a long moment of entertainment and fascination. I read the entirety of the wikipedia link on Chernobyland Roentgens while reading her story. That's one of the key features of the internet that I love: instant delivery of education about random topics I wouldn't otherwise learn about. So for me this delivered exactly what I wanted.
To you, the story didn't deliver or the extending circumstances diminished heavily from the story because you care and know about a lot more than me.
I do this quite often. My apologies. Thanks for clarifying, though. I'm actually sort of glad I made the mistake so that you could clarify so fully. :) This is an amazing point about truth and it applies well to kidofspeed. However, I think that there are different types of truths which your statement also applies to. Note: none of the following is a response to kidofspeed and I don't think it applies to kidofspeed (much deeper than his/her bullshit) so please read as a broader comment. There are truth and there are lies. A girl could say "my hair is blond" when it's really red. That is a simple lie. If she were to say "my hair is red" and her hair is indeed red, that would be the simple truth. Then there is fiction and non-fiction, or real and not real, and the shallow kidofspeed version of non-fiction which is really fiction and all these complicated areas in between the two. Then there are actualities and realities. Things that literally happened. They only happened in one way but they are told from different perspectives and some are very close to the actual reality and some are further from the actual reality. Together we can gain a broader knowledge about the actuality as we see it through these different lenses. As you point out, real stories - true stories - non-fiction stories - keep on giving. There was a real event which the story tells but it too can be told in a lot of different ways. Even semi-fictionalized stories about these can add something of value to the conversation. There are truths in life - big major realizations about stuff that aren't as concrete as events. These are larger truths about life that can be revealed in a myriad of ways. This type of truth can be revealed through fiction or non fiction, real or fake, actualities or realities or flat out lies or anything in the middle. A lot of times, this type of truth has to be arrived at by a variety of contradictions and lies, because the truth is fucking complicated. This truth exists regardless of the vehicle used. Two of my favorite passages on the subject (but I'm not very well read so...yeah) comes from Tim O’Brien in “How to Tell a True War Story”: He touches on a bunch of different points here. First, the audience feels cheated if the story never happened - if it is a lie. Second, that this version of Truth is not always tied to factual or actual happenings. Truth is what comes from the story, whether it be fact or fiction, real or not real. A true story does not shy away from the reality but sometimes it avoids reality. Sometimes it has to avoid reality in order to find the truth. What is most intriguing about an outstanding story is that it rarely actively tries to say anything or make the reader feel anything. It sort of turns into a journey of its own - a journey between the author and the words and something almost mystical. So, back to your quote: This applies perfectly to fraudulent non-fiction, like kidofspeed. Her/His story would have been better and been able to keep giving if it closer represented reality. I don't think his/her story was good enough or attempted to access a larger truth, so it's moot. But I think your quote perfectly applies to this other type of truth. The hard to access, contradictory, obscene, beautiful truth. And for that reason, I don't think that something has to be factual to be true. Perhaps, as you put it, the reason that this type of fiction works is that "we value the perspective of the narrator and know that it is our only entry into their world."^1 But perhaps it's something a bit more than that. Because rarely, in the end, do we care about the author and their journey in creating and telling this story. We only care about what we take from it. What we feel, what we learn, what we experience, and what we realize during our journey. Once the words are on the page, or the film is shot, or the story is told over the campfire, the author only exists in the past. The story has become ours and affects us in the present. ^1: I also think that sometimes presenting fiction as non-fiction affects our perspective and alters what we take away from the story. This is an entirely different matter, but sometimes you have to believe something is true to be absorbed enough in it to get to the real truth. If you knew from the beginning that it wasn't true, you might feel cheated and that might take away from what you are able to take away from it - whether that be delving deeper into external wikipedia links, experiencing and thinking about something new, or simply being able to add this bit of truth to your briefcase of knowledge. Woo. That got deep.
edit, 405 days later: relevant conversation on truth vs fiction hereThat's just close enough to the truth to be dangerous, and just far enough away to miss the point.
If something is real, it's a value to everyone: if you know a little you're exposed to the broad links it provides. If you know a lot, it likely gives you a different perspective, raises things you haven't considered before, may give you somewhere to look that you haven't peered into.
For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
Is it true?
The answer matters.
You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and maybe it did, anything's possible even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, "The fuck you do that for?" and the jumper says, "Story of my life, man," and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead.
That's a true story that never happened.
If something is real, it's a value to everyone: if you know a little you're exposed to the broad links it provides. If you know a lot, it likely gives you a different perspective, raises things you haven't considered before, may give you somewhere to look that you haven't peered into.
It's interesting - you read that passage and you get "a true story that never happened" and I read it (thank you) and the truth of it is here: The devil, as they say, is in the details. Guy I used to mix with worked a few seasons of COPS. We were swapping stories one fine evening (he has a lot more stories, not only because he's older but because he has led a life of questionable decisions) and he described his first experience with gangrene in a back alley up in Hollywood, chasing after some pillhead wearing a bag mixer and chasing after a cameraman, and smelling something incredible, looking down, seeing a homeless guy with a disgusting leg, and then seeing the homeless guy whip out a can of Glade and spray it, embarrassed, into the air. There are all sorts of writings and stories about homelessness. Dated a girl whose father and stepmother were both psychiatrists who worked with the homeless of Seattle for decades. But that can of Glade really sticks with me. It rally stuck with my friend. That's the sort of thing - like the water buffalo - that comes out as so random that it feels like you can learn something from it. And I think that's where the truth aspect matters, regardless of the "fact" aspect. "The fog of war" is real and it applies to more than war. If I throw your experience beyond your expectations, that which you observe is going to be a new truth. It's like back in the glory days of particle physics, when scientists were smashing atoms together to see what new atoms they got - push the universe past its boundaries and you will find something regardless of whether or not you know what to do with it. By holding up that something you are increasing the knowledge of the universe. The self-evident righteousness of the tortured water buffalo is a new thing under the sun, but also an old thing. I can't remember if it was Fallujah or Najaf, but the video of the scared-ass kid with an M4 beating the shit out of some Iraqi that happened to be in the same building as him twenty minutes after his best friend got his face blown off has a lot in common with that water buffalo. But you compare that with Hurt Locker and it's an external vs. internal perspective. Jarhead is not Blackhawk Down. It's a here's what I've learned perspective vs. a here's what I saw perspective. In the first instance, the act is curation - an attempt to make sense of a situation that happened removed from the author's experience. In the second instance, the act is testimony - an attempt to share everything important about a situation that happened directly within the author's experience. Both perspectives are valuable, but we give the second perspective more leeway - first hand knowledge is of value for its purity. Second hand knowledge is of value for its refinement. There are examples in which the purity is refined - Catch 22 would not be the book it is if Joseph Heller hadn't flown 60 missions in the nose of a B-25. Likewise, Forever War is a very different book than Starship Troopers because Heinlein lost his legs to polio as a child while Haldeman nearly lost a foot to a claymore in Vietnam. And I think it's important, as a reader or viewer, to know the perspective presented in order to interpret it correctly. The eight-year-old heroin addict is powerful allegory if presented as allegory. Presented as truth, it's a call-to-arms. Both are valuable, but as participants in media we require just as much of a "receiving" filter as our narrators require a "broadcasting" filter. And really, that's what it comes down to - if I rode a motorcycle through the Restricted Zone around Pripyat, I'd likely see some interesting things that you wouldn't think of. I would, in that "fog of war", make some associations that you likely wouldn't make sitting on your couch. My associations would have the value of being genuine. I would be giving you purity. However, if I'm sitting on a couch in Germany, writing about riding a motorcycle through the Restricted Zone, I'm not in that fog of war. My associations are not driven by reality, they're driven by flights of fancy. They are no less valuable, but if I present them as true, I give my audience a "parameter mismatch." There is inherent truth in a true experience if only because of the perspective. By wearing the perspective of "truth" while presenting "fiction", something is truly lost in translation.And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do.
Gah I just got in bed so I can't reply fully even though I want to. I'm really loving this discussion as well and appreciate all the links. Nighttime reading, morning replying. Goodnight.