What
started as an online flirtation for French Canadian Sandra Bagaria soon turned
very real, except it wasn’t. Perhaps she should have been more suspicious in
the age of catfishing, but the ostensive Arraf always had good justifications
for her elusiveness, such as the fact Skype is blocked in Syria. With Bagaria’s
encouragement, the Arraf persona launched the Gay Girl in Damascus blog, which soon became a retweetable
phenomenon. To their credit, the person behind the phony identity had a decent
handle on the Syrian situation, but said individual (easily findable online)
misjudged badly when they decided to have Arraf kidnapped.
Having
been widely cited in credible media outlets, as well as The Guardian, news of Arraf’s abduction ignited an online firestorm
of protest. However, as real deal Syrian dissident Rami Nakhla explains, it
diverted attention from legitimate known prisoners of conscience, such as
Ghazzawi. It also gave an opportunity for the pathologically anti-Israeli
Electronic Intifada to do the Assad regime a favor by following the i.p. trail
of the person behind the Gay Girl in Damascus.
Ironically,
Profile does exactly what it decries,
by concentrating almost entirely on the Arraf story, at the near total expense
of Ghazzawi and other imprisoned Syrian activists. It would have made much more
sense to divide the narrative between the very real perils facing Ghazzawi and
the bizarre Arraf narrative unraveling concurrently. However, we have to deal
with the film as it is, rather than how it might have been.
To
an extent, Deraspe justifies Profile’s editorial
strategy by following Bagaria’s long-term efforts to process the revelation. It
is good to know that she was able to reach some measure of closure, but without
the wider Syrian implications, her experience would not be so very different
from that of Manti Te’o.
