An anonymous Facebook post earlier this month, made by someone claiming to be a student at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Department of Atmospheric Sciences, predicted that Taipei would announce school and work closures for Typhoon Fung-wong for at least two days from Wednesday to Friday last week.
The person promised to give away 100 fried chicken cutlets and cups of bubble milk tea if only one day of closures was announced, or 300 cutlets and cups of tea if their prediction was completely incorrect.
The post got hundreds of people to gather in front of NTU’s Fu Bell on Sunday for nothing. This revealed the fragility of Taiwanese society’s information literacy and culture of trust. This vulnerability is linked to the nation’s status as a scam hotspot.
People believed the post not because Taiwanese are especially easy to fool, but because the message aligned perfectly with their expectations. The collective desire for a typhoon day off made many willing to trust anything that appeared even vaguely professional.
The same is often true for scams. Whether it is the desire to pay off debts, make money, win prizes or find romance, when a message aligns with a person’s hopes, they tend to overlook its red flags. This confirmation bias is a universal psychological tendency shared by all humans.
The virality of the fried chicken incident and the success of scams rely on a false sense of authority. The anonymous poster claimed to be an NTU student from a professional department, which boosted their credibility. Similarly, scam groups tend to impersonate prosecutors, police officers, banks or official accounts, so sometimes, one phone call is enough to frighten people into believing them without question.
Taiwanese society has long placed strong trust in the authorities, which in turn makes it easy for authority impersonators to succeed. This is a sign that public education has neglected risk literacy for too long.
Furthermore, the more that people like and comment on a post, or line up for something, the more real those things appear to be. Herd mentality turns “everyone believes it” into “it must be true.”
Scammers exploit this tendency. A fake investment group with 5,000 members or posts filled with interactions from fake accounts creates the illusion of a real and safe community.
Information literacy has long been lacking in Taiwan. From elementary school to university, there are very few programs that teach media literacy, verification skills or online safety. In an environment overwhelmed by information, people are often left to rely on their intuition.
The cost of the fried chicken incident was merely a wasted trip to NTU. However, in cases of fraud, the cost could be someone’s life savings, torn families or even threats to personal safety.
Taiwanese are not “easily fooled.” Rather, Taiwan is an environment where it is too easy for scams to succeed. Until comprehensive media literacy education, reliable channels for fact-checking and effective oversight of social media platforms are established, scam groups and anonymous rumors would continue to flourish.
The NTU fried chicken incident might be funny and unbelievable, but it reveals a deeper vulnerability in Taiwan’s information environment.
Without adequate media literacy education, verification mechanisms and platform oversight, similar situations would continue to occur, gradually eroding the trust and safety that Taiwanese society has worked so hard to build.
In the age of information chaos, fact-checking is a skill essential for protecting ourselves.
Ken is the pen name of a social worker.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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