BUT WHO'S LYING - BN OR PR? A bandwagon of gullible Malaysians?

CYBERSPACE is usually rife with all kinds of information, many of them of questionable authenticity. In social networking sites especially, it's often difficult to tell the difference between what's true and not, what with all the tall tales going around.

Many would probably have seen the post about rampant cases of robbers pelting the car windshields of drivers with eggs.

Victims were advised not to operate their wipers or spray any water on the mess as egg mixed with water will become milky and block your vision up to 92.5 per cent.

You will then be forced to stop by the roadside and be pounced upon by the wily robbers.

Another warns recipients not to accept key rings given out for free at petrol stations as they apparently contain a hidden, sun-powered device that allows criminals to track the movements of potential victims.

All the aforementioned messages are not true. They have been disproved by experts and hoax slayers, but that has not stopped people from "liking" them and, worse, hitting the "share" button to perpetuate the lies to their "friends".

In the recent 13th General Election (GE13), social networking sites were flooded with all manner of unverified posts. There were supposedly busloads of foreigners being ferried to polling centres.

And then, there were the illegal ballot boxes and blackouts.

Three former Universiti Malaysia Terengganu students could not cast their votes as they were detained and threatened with a parang on polling day by those who suspected them of being foreigners.

Several non-governmental organisations lodged police reports on Saturday over the actions of those who had prevented people from casting their votes following doubts about their nationality.

Indeed, I had friends on Facebook rushing out to their polling centres to form human barricades to prevent these "busloads of foreigners" from voting after news spread like wildfire on the social networking site.

One reluctant one was threatened by his wife to go or face dire consequences at home. He waited meekly with several like-minded individuals but could not tell who was Malaysian and who wasn't.

All these incidents raise two questions: why are Malaysians so gullible, and more importantly, what does a Malaysian look like?

We rarely stop to think whether something makes sense. Many spread stories and forward SMSes and emails without bothering to check the authenticity of what they are passing forward. Another example involved the widely shared story of Grambo, the story of a grandmother who shot off the testicles of a man who had raped her grandchild. It was a hoax.

Ironically, the news that has been greeted with incredulity and gasps of disbelief -- actress Angelina Jolie undergoing a double mastectomy -- is completely true.

Some people are just very easily deceived. This also explains why there are those who continue to seek out unqualified beauty therapists when they have been inundated with grisly photos of scarred faces and other body parts resulting from botched beauty treatments.

One does not need to be a sociologist, psychologist or feng shui master to conclude that Malaysians are a gullible lot. This appears unlikely to change. It might, in fact, just get worse.

What is also unlikely to change is our ability, or rather inability, to decipher whether a person is Malaysian or not based on looks alone.

Malaysian beauty queen Kimberly Leggett, for example, looks more "ang moh" than "Malaysian". So did the other epitome of Malaysian beauty before her, former Miss Universe Malaysia Deborah Priya Henry.

Does a Malaysian look like Datuk Siti Nurhaliza? Harith Iskander? Hans Isaac? Amber Chia?

Leggett herself put it succinctly in an oft-quoted pearl of wisdom (a rare phenomenon among beauty queens): "How does a Malaysian look like? How are we meant to look like? As a country, we pride ourselves on being a blend of backgrounds and a melting pot of cultures that's unified: 1Malaysia. There is no such thing as a 'Malaysian look'."

So yes, what does a Malaysian look like? Those who turned up at polling centres that day to weed out foreign phantom voters should have given that a thought before jumping on the bandwagon full of fellow gullible Malaysians.

Beauty queen Kimberly Leggett says Malaysians pride themselves as on being a blend of backgrounds and a melting pot of cultures.

NST