A tongue-in-cheek fake news experiment by Pakistani comedian Shehzad Ghias over the past week highlighted an attitude that many believed was dead: that white people are received with disproportionate attention in the subcontinent simply because of the colour of their skin.
It all began on January 21, when an American named Samantha A. Gerry from Poughkeepsie, New York, shared her plans to visit Pakistan this year. She described herself as a model and a vlogger who posted short videos on social media.
Her reference to Cynthia D Richie struck a chord with many people. In November, Twitter users in Pakistan began to share a 2016 photo of Ritchie, an American traveller cycling on the streets of the country, as an example of a foreigner who held a positive image of their country.
In recent years, especially since the discovery that terror leader Osama bin Laden had been hiding in Abbotabad for several years, many Westerners have come to view Pakistan as an extremely dangerous place.
Within four hours of Gerry’s announcement that she was looking for places in Pakistan to couchsurf, Pakistani men were inviting her to their homes, “welcoming her with open arms”.
Pretty soon, Gerry’s account began to win fans because of her praise for Pakistan and some nifty appeal to nationalistic sentiment. She posted messages about Pakistan’s beauty and also shared tweets about supposed Indian propaganda against Pakistan.
It wasn’t long before Gerry was getting invited on podcasts to talk about feminism.
With rapid popularity came some detractors. Some suggested that she was backed by Pakistan’s ruling party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or the Pakistani Army’s Inter-Services Public Relations. Some connected her to Pakistani conservative Twitter personality, Farhan Virk.
On Sunday, Ghias decided to call the bluff. He announced that Samantha A Gerry was a fake profile that he had created.
As most Pakistani Twitter users were caught up with the social media noise surrounding Gerry, “only a few people picked up on this attempt at being a meta troll and presenting a satirical take on a white traveller with a saviour complex to expose our colonial hangover and wait for a white messiah,” Ghias wrote.
Soon after the disclosure that Gerry was fake, Ghias began laying out the jokes.
Ghias’ social media prank played out in a pardoxical time in Pakistan. Even as social media users were championing Ritchie’s cycle trip, a bicycle rally planned by women in Peshwar for January 19 had to be cancelled after Islamist organisations threatened the organisers.
As Ghias tweeted, “Cynthia D Richie is definitely real and exists but the amount of worship she gets in Pakistan is more to do with her skin colour” than her opinions.”
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