What it’s all coming to, possibly …

Regular visitors to the Rust will be all too familiar with our mission statement, raison d’etre, ethos, quirky attitudes and interests – and even our total lack of interest in the potential commercial upsides of our unique and extraordinary success and global domination of the market sector we occupy.

Despite our general “oldies” perspective upon the world and our sometimes contradictory themes and opinions, it would not be fair to contend that we are completely “out of touch” with life as it is lived in the modern, fast-moving, era of technological wizardry and social media.

Today I thought I might demonstrate to our readers quite the opposite.

In the age that brought us the former USA President Donald Trump nothing epitomises the madness of the 21st Century more starkly than the phenomenon best encapsulated by the description  “Fake News”.

Can anyone ever believe anything they see or read upon the internet when it is so easy to make things up and publicise them around the world in an instant?

During my overnight trawl of the newspaper websites I came across the heart-warming report of the announcement of the marriage of the Pakistani Malala Yousafzai (now 24)  – the young girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for the right of girls to an education and later won a Nobel Peace Prize and studied at Oxford University.

See here for a link to the report, penned by Emer Scully, as it appears today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL

Whilst I was reading said piece I was intrigued by the second of the accompanying photographs – captioned “It is not known when Malala and Asser began their relationship, but her husband posted a birthday message in July (pictured together)”.

I re-produce said image here for the sake of my subject today:

 

I wondered whether any Rusters – like me – have noticed something odd about this image?

It purports to be a photograph of Malala and her new husband posing together in July this year.

In the photograph is a third person on the right, a more mature gentleman whose identity is not given.

I initially assumed that he might be the father or relation of one of the love birds. But then I noticed something strange – the image of this third person is either a cardboard cut-out version of a middle-aged man apparently standing on a red carpet at some film premiere or celebrity-attended event.

Or, alternatively, it is an image that someone has “photo-shopped” [it must be said, rather amateurishly] into the photograph so to appear to be standing beside the happy couple.

Have I spotted a classic example of “Fake News”, I ask myself?

I think we should be told.