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A New Elena Story

Posted by michael on from the old-trees-full-of-iron dept.

SwiftBoy writes "Elena, of motorcycling through Chernobyl fame has gone riding again, this time to dig up the history of Kiev's fortifications. Interesting that after 60 years all that stuff is still there."

11 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Elena was debunked a while ago. by Jason+Scott · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God dammit.. who the fuck cares if she didnt really ride a motorcycle alone at chernobyl.. the pics are real and are still powerful.. fuck

    Because riding through Chernobyl on a motorcycle would be inherently risky, dangerous, unlawful and maybe even lethal. When a person claims they are portraying an event, with photographs, they are implying they actually experienced that event, unless of course we're in the realm of fantasy. Which would be fine.

    But if a person neither deliniates the photo essay as a fantasy or indicates in some way that you are not seeing what you are being told, then you're letting your audience down, and you're spreading, basically, lies. It's called bad journalism. Some people might not care, like you, my little profane anonymous friend. But a lot of people do.

  2. Re:Wasn't she the one by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If this is all fake, this is one damn good fake.

    What was supposedly fake about it anyway?

  3. Yeah, the Ukraine Government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    was the first to say "she was not allowed to be there, so she wasn't there...".

  4. Fool me once... by Txiasaeia · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The first Elena story was interesting, moving and touching. Much of the comments on slashdot on the original story said much the same thing. There's something very powerful about a photoblog about a lone woman motorbiking through a deserted (sorta) post-apocalpytic town.

    HOWEVER, once I found out it was faked, I was extremely upset. The original impact of the story was immediately gone, and I felt like I was cheated out of those emotions of awe and wonder. There's no way I'm going to go out on a limb again and trust anything that woman says.

    There was a story here previously about the journalistic quality of blogs on the Internet and how they couldn't touch real journalism. I now understand what that's all about. IMHO, /. shouldn't be giving any credence to Elena after her previous scam was unearthed.

    --
    Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
    1. Re:Fool me once... by danila · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Faked is a wrong term. She just made a personal photo gallery for friends, she didn't submit the /. story for publicity. So she has absolutely no responsibility for being factual, just like I don't have that for my LJ diary. I mean, I can write there about my fantasies of having sex with Natalie Portman without adding disclaimers that "this is a work of fiction". I can even intersperse these stories with real facts. There would be nothing wrong with it, and if that diary was featured on Slashdot, I would not be responsible for people thinking it is 100% true. And I would not deserve the "liar" label for that.

      Internet doesn't have a single standard for integrity, truthfulness and lack of fantasies. NEWS.BBC.CO.UK has one standard for truthfulness, WIKIPEDIA.ORG has another, SLASHDOT.ORG yet another, THEONION.COM has another standard too and my personal blog (if I had one) would have yet another. And there is nothing wrong with that, it's not like The Onion is somehow "worse" than The Economist. So it is silly to approach Elena's story with the same standards you have for Reuters. You don't have the right to be upset about anything other than your own gullibility.

      --
      Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
  5. Re:Elena was debunked a while ago. by quigonn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because riding through Chernobyl on a motorcycle would be inherently risky, dangerous, unlawful and maybe even lethal. When a person claims they are portraying an event, with photographs, they are implying they actually experienced that event, unless of course we're in the realm of fantasy. Which would be fine.

    Nevertheless, some guys at IAEA had their fun with this website. A close friend of mine knows a few people who work for them in Vienna, and when he showed them the website, they were manically laughing and stating that if it was really true, she would die in about 2 years.

    --
    A monkey is doing the real work for me.
  6. They have that stuff in Germany, too by goon+america · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Interesting that after 60 years all that stuff is still there

    It's that way in Germany, too. I know that in Hamburg, some of the major bomb shelters were so incredibly massive that they simply never tore them down. They put nightclubs in there now. You can see them pretty easily, they're these huge masses of concrete... one of the most touching things, besides the bombed-out cathedrals left unrestored, and the occasional Kennedyplatze or Eisenhowerstrasse you run into...

    We don't really have a parallel here. This is one of the reasons that I believe that when Americans and Europeans think about war, they actually conceptualize very different things.

  7. Re:Wasn't she the one by mm0mm · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ... she'd just taken some pictures of herself on a motorcycle on the highway and then interspersed them with file photos of Cheronobyl's abandoned areas, then presented them as a photo diary of a trip that never happened.
    and what's the big deal about it? Maybe she fooled us, maybe not. Even if her roadtrip was a lie, that won't change other facts. If this is a fake story I wish Chernobyl's accident was the one "that never happened."

    Even if her story was fake and she made herself a journalist by doing so, she did a darn good job convincing the readers. Anything presented on the web as the truth can be fake or real. It is viewer's responsibility to examine credibility and authenticity of each story and make most out of it. If you can't provide facts to back up your claims to discredit her story, then your allegation, without any valid proof, can be fake as well.

    Her story being fake doesn't change the history of Chernobyl or the fact the area has been, and will be, abandoned for years. If she's told us lies, it is her stupidity and lack of integrity that made her a lier. Big deal. Maybe she just wanted to be in a spotlight. We believed in her story just like we believed in the allegations of Iraq's WMD programs. I believe there are more dangerous lies than hers, even if her story turned out fake. Her "trip," whether fake or not, revealed very significant and important information about the doomed area, and that's all matters to me.

  8. Fascinating by ewe2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't really care about the Chernobyl issue. Serpent's Wall was far more educational and entertaining, particularly "Elena's" sardonic sense of humour. Probably more honest also. Bring back fertility festivals!!

    --
    insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
  9. When in Germany, take notice by infolib · · Score: 2, Insightful
    of the distribution of new and old buildings in the city centres. In many places you'll find lots of old buildings, and then suddenly 3 or 5 houses in fifties/sixties style. That's a WWII Ground zero.

    Elsewhere downtown is mostly newer houses dotted with small clusters of stuff looking like 1880-1930. That's the hard hit places. I've also walked the wooded hills around Kaiserslautern where you'll often find those little round waterholes size ~4m. (10-15 ft). That's bomb craters - according to an old guy who lived there "they're bigger when new". Kinda tells something about why the idea of war is so repulsive to the average german.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
  10. the people debunking the original story by XO · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are no credible debunkings of this story. All debunkings are potentially just as filled with garbage as the original Elena writings are.

    In any case, she is one hot chick that I would love to go on a motorcycle ride with.

    --
    "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/