Metafilter And The Russian Sex Slaves That Never Were

Posted: May 23rd, 2010 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Miconian At Large | Tags: Lux Lounge, metafilter, russian mafia | 113 Comments »

I’m part of a vocal minority in a conversation over at Metafilter that has gotten a lot of attention from other blogs, and on the websites of popular print-based publications like Newsweek and Mother Jones. I’m disappointed at the lack of critical thinking and willingness to embrace the hype all round, and the mefi threads have proven unfriendly to skepticism, so I’m going to lay out my ideas here. I’ll also ping others who seem to share my concerns to some extent or other, in hope that they may see this post as a place to comment on the phenomenon, relatively unfettered by hype.

If you are completely unfamiliar with the situation, then the basic threads are here and here.

The popular narrative is this:

Two young women from Russia were suckered by a scam in which they were offered visas and good jobs in the US. Little did they know that they were on a fast track to becoming prostitutes and/or sex slaves. An American man who knew one of the women posted to Metafilter, asking for help. The community rallied, offering resources and contacting the authorities. One NYC mefite met the Russians as they arrived in the city and took them in. Crisis averted!

Taken at face value, this story has a lot of appeal, which is, I think, the main reason why so many people are already so resistant to the idea of taking it at anything more than face value. It has a sort of “we’re living in a movie” vibe to it. The clear line between good and evil; the international intrigue, the feeling of a conspiracy being foiled, the relief at seeing a group of altruistic people come together to defeat a group of selfish people, and the fascination at the idea that the benevolent people in the scenario mostly don’t know each other.

But perhaps most compelling is the idea that here we have evidence that the Internet can be a good thing. Specifically, that the Metafilter community is a collective force of good, and that being part of that community has a profound and substantive meaning. That older, more famous, and more traditional outlets like Newsweek are reporting the story adds fuel to this fire.

The fact that publications ostensibly grounded in real journalism are reporting this story so uncritically and with such lack of depth is, to me, almost more interesting than the story itself.

Many old-guard reporters and editors are scared that the Internet will make them obsolete. Online events happen fast; memes live and die quickly; if you want to write about something that is unfolding at a particular URL, you have to write about it now, now, now. So here we have a great opportunity for a reporter with the “what’s happening online” beat: A complete, feel-good narrative, validating both the power of technology and the power of the human spirit.

Within the discussion on Metafilter itself, users who question any part of the popular narrative, or attempt to suggest counter-narratives even as possibilities worth considering, have been shouted down. Skeptics are treated as disruptive, and their motives are questioned. At the same time, to my fascination, another narrative has emerged, a sort of super-narrative, its purpose being to protect the integrity of the main story against the possibility that, at some point in the future, it might be found to conflict with reality.

The super-narrative is: A group of big-hearted people united through an online community because of their common desire to Do Good.

In my view, many aspects of the primary narrative merit further examination. Some of them are:

- How do we know that the women were caught up in a trafficking operation?
- Why were they coming here, what kind of jobs did they think they were going to get, and how long were they planning to stay in the US?
- Did they decide not to follow their original course of action because they realized that they had been headed toward their doom, or because they realized that circumstance was handing them a place to stay, and friends, and money, and free legal help? Or maybe some other reason?
- Is the bar where the women were supposed to meet their NYC contact as seedy and disreputable as it was made out to be on Metafilter?
- Will they be allowed to stay in the US? If so, how will they live for the remainder of the time that they are here? And how will that differ from their original goals?

Suggestions that these questions, or similar ones, might be worth examining have drawn a lot of ire on Metafilter.

It occurred to me that I was in a position to inject a bit of reality into the situation. I live in New York. I checked Google Maps and discovered that the Lux Lounge, the bar where the women were supposed to meet their contact, was only about a half hour subway ride from where I work. I posted a comment in the MeFi thread, announcing that I was going to go that night, and asking if anyone else wanted to join me.

Susannah (not a MeFite, but I’d sent her a link to the discussion) agreed that a trip to the Lux sounded fun. We had a nice Mexican dinner in SoHo, and headed over, getting there around ten. We had a good time, and I thought that the speculation on Metafilter about the nature of the club was likely to be wrong. When I got home, I posted a comment to that effect, the end of which was:

One popular idea in the MeFi discussion, which I found hard to to read without imagining anguished faces, heads clutched with both hands, and quavering voices, concerned my lack of interest in assuming that the cops would work out all the details.

Whenever I hear a statement, in any context, to the effect of “Don’t worry, the authorities have everything under control,” I feel a little sick. I don’t think I’ve ever been in, or heard about, a situation in which such a statement turned out to be reliable. It’s also the sort of statement typically given, with increasing vigor, when things have started to get really bad, when the seams have started to show, when those who are the most desperate to hold up a facade have realized that just a few more kicks will send it tumbling down.

So. Any narrative with so many fans and so little substance deserves a counter-narrative. I have one. I’m not saying that it’s accurate, and if it turns out to be wrong in every way, I’ll have no regrets. I just want to offer a scenario that’s just as plausible, and perhaps more so, than the one that has engaged what MeFites like to call the hive mind.

Here is my counter-narrative:

A couple of young women from Russia made an arrangement with an agency that promised to get them a job and work visas in exchange for cash. They had peers who had made similar journeys, and they had grown up in a world in which corruption and prostitution are neither uncommon nor poorly understood. They went into the situation with their eyes open, wanting the adventure, believing themselves capable of negotiating whatever obstacles they encountered. They didn’t expect the agency to be on the level. They had considered the possibility that, as women in their early 20s with little or no English, there was a limited range of employment options waiting for them. They figured they would see what happened, and deal with any problems as they came. Meanwhile, one of them let her American friend, her former teacher, (“Fake” on MeFi) know that she was on the way. Remembering horror stories he had read and seen on TV, and feeling a sense of responsibility for his former student, he panicked. Since he was on the road at the time, he talked to the audience he had most readily available: Metafilter. MeFi was fertile soil for this seed, and in no time the story had ballooned into an epic quest that the community must embark upon as one, to bring justice to the world. Fake called and texted the girls, warning them of what they were headed for, but to no avail, because they pretty much knew. The fact that they were scheduled to meet a strange man at a club at midnight wasn’t a surprise, nor did it sound particularly ominous (nor was it). The Lux, a well-kept, legit 18+ joint in a decent neighborhood, with a clientele that’s mostly Russian and includes plenty of women, was a perfectly safe place to meet at midnight, and would probably have been a great place to work. (It might also have just been a meeting spot, and not the place the women were supposed to work at all.)

A mefite who had read the thread, (her MeFi name is ridiculously long, so I’ll call her by her first name, Katherine, which is not a secret), got the girls’ phone number from Fake, texted them a friendly message about hanging out and having a drink, and they agreed. Katherine and friends picked up the women, took them out, and took them home. It wasn’t long before the Russians realized that they had stumbled into a much better situation than they ever could have expected: they now had a hip young host living in Brooklyn. They also had a community of online do-gooders who had taken up their “cause,” sending money (at last count, Katherine had received over four thousand dollars in donations), recruiting legal help and getting the authorities involved. So they decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. They contacted Fake, thanked him for “saving” them and introducing them to his NYC friends, and embraced their new American lifestyle. What the hell? The adventure has already begun, the worst thing that could happen is that they’ll get deported, and they weren’t planning on staying here permanently anyway.

My counter-narrative may be completely right, or partly right, or not right at all. But it’s just as believable as the primary narrative. Some might say more so. And yet, it’s the primary narrative that is circulating, practically unquestioned, in the mainstream press.

My counter-super-narrative is this: A bunch of people came up with a story together, and wanted very badly to believe that it was true. So badly, in fact, that they convinced themselves, and many others, that it was.

Post-script: I have no beef with Fake (Dan Reetz), the guy who posted the original question. He was just looking out for somebody he knew, and I doubt he anticipated, nor did he really participate in, the hype that followed. Also, his only comment about my skepticism was that he respected it.

*****

All images above with a gray background are screenshots of comments in this thread, where they can, and should, be viewed in their original context. The one with the green background is from the original AskMe thread.

 

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