The Boy Who Cried Wolf — Reimagined for the Post-Truth Era
Once upon a time, there was a young shepherd boy who lived on the very edge of a remote village. He found his job looking after sheep to be incredibly boring and so — although the 4G coverage was patchy at best — he spent much of his time on his smartphone, endlessly trolling strangers on Twitter.
After not getting the reaction or the attention he felt he deserved, he came up with a plan to scare everyone in the local village Facebook group for a laugh. First, he photographed his sheep gambolling playfully in their field, then uploaded the image to his laptop and imported it into Photoshop.
Next, he Googled the most terrifying picture of a wolf he could find and used a combination of the magic wand tool, pixel feathering and content-aware fill to transpose the beast into the original photo of his sheep. Once satisfied it looked as though the wolf was really there, preying on his sheep, he exported the final JPEG with a smirk.
Shaking with anticipation, he logged onto Facebook and made his way immediately to the local village page. He noticed someone complaining about their bins not being collected again, but there was no time to even leave a quick laughing-with-tears emoji. He uploaded his wolf pic to the group with the following caption —
“WOLF! WOLF! THERE’S A WOLF AFTER MY SHEEP!”
Almost instantly, the comments were awash with concerned citizens. People typed out their fear and their anguish, offering messages of support and venting their dismay. Before too long, the conversation had descended into a cacophony of madness - all manner of conspiracy theories were put forward, blaming the sudden appearance of the wolf on everything under the sun.
And, of course, people shared it. Boy, did they share it. They tagged their friends and dropped it into their group chats. They reposted it to their own profiles and sent it spiralling into the newsfeeds of others. They took screenshots and uploaded them to every message board, every forum, every network they belonged to. Someone even created a dedicated subreddit.
The shepherd boy was immensely satisfied. But he wanted more. So the very next night he took another photo of his flock, then once again went in search of another menacing wolf pic. He carefully cut and pasted the animal onto a new layer, erasing any trace of the original image. He was particularly proud of the lighting on this one; the shadows really matched up. As soon as he was done, he uploaded the newly doctored image to the village Facebook group.
“WOLF! WOLF! THE WOLF IS BACK!”
Within seconds the comments were flooding in, brimming with all the usual OMGs and LOLs. The entire emotional rainbow was on full display — anger, amusement, sadness, fear, shock; even that specific kind of weird twisted joy people take in the misfortune of others. Then of course the empty platitudes began to appear, with many of the villagers doling out their digital thoughts and virtual prayers.
The boy knew he was onto a winner. He repeated the trick numerous times, and on every occasion the villagers responded with alarm. But not once did they come to the edge of the village to see if the wolf was really there with their own eyes. No, they were far too busy scrolling through Instagram with envious eyes, watching people lip-sync to pop songs on Tik Tok and sending each other unsolicited dick pics on Snapchat.
Of course, a very real wolf did arrive one day, prowling around the perimeter of the shepherd boy’s farm. The boy spotted it from afar and reached instinctively for his phone. This was almost too good to be true — if he got a real photo of an actual wolf hunting down his sheep, he wouldn’t even have to use Photoshop. With shaking hands, the shepherd boy held his phone aloft and tried to zoom in on the wolf. But then something happened.
Without any warning whatsoever, the shepherd boy got an incoming call from his mum. The phone came to life, his ringtone echoing across the farm. The wolf immediately swung his head in the boy’s direction and snarled. The boy, shaking more than ever, desperately tried to photograph the wolf as it ran towards him, eyes narrowed, barely more than a motion blur of teeth and fur. Instead, he accidentally knocked the camera onto selfie mode, and the only pictures he managed to take were of his own nostrils.
Luckily for the shepherd boy, the wolf was not interested in gobbling him up. For it transpired the wolf subscribed to an anti-human Youtube channel that had recently convinced him eating young shepherd boys was linked to autism, and that it was best to steer clear. And so the wolf slinked off into the night, hungry, but happy he was living his best life.
A little shaken from his close call, the shepherd boy decided to head to the relative safety of the village. As he tip-toed through the deserted streets, he felt as if they were somehow illuminated, despite the moonless night. Looking around, he realised every house was bathed in the eerie glow of electric blue, as every villager stared vacantly into their screens and continued their mindless bedtime scrolls.
With everyone so distracted, the boy was able to waltz straight into the village hall. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the wooden floor, crawling around until he found a plug socket where he could charge his devices. Batteries replenished, he hoisted himself onto the head chair and took another selfie. He emailed the photo of himself to everyone in his contact list, declaring himself the new supreme leader of the village. And everyone was too distracted or too tired of hearing about wolves to even care.
And there he stayed, seated upon his throne, churning out lie after lie, night after night, totally unaccountable and completely unchecked. And because he knew the villagers so well — exactly where each of them lived, their jobs, their relationships, their likes and dislikes — he could target them ever more specifically. With every new post, he understood more and more how they would react, and figured out precisely what he needed to do to increase their engagement next time.
The wolf memes themselves became more and more sophisticated — they morphed and evolved until they barely resembled wolves at all. The boy branched out into video content, generating increasingly elaborate ways of terrifying his fellow townsfolk. The one that got the most views featured an entire CGI army of time-travelling ghost wolves that could transform into flying robot dragons. He was particularly proud of that one.
A handful of the villagers slowly began to suspect he was having them on; they realised none of this could possibly be true. They banded together and confronted him by saying so in the comments. However, this simply caused many of the other villagers to jump immediately to the shepherd boy’s defence. They left replies to the original comments, accusing the other villagers of peddling fake news.
Interestingly, there was yet another contingent who knew for certain the boy was lying to them — that’s what young shepherd boy’s do, after all — but this particular subset of villagers said they didn’t mind. In fact, they liked it. That was just the way things were, they said. It’s not as if they could change it, even if they wanted to. Besides, they reasoned, it didn’t affect them either way. A wolf won’t get me, they said. And that’s all that mattered.
So that’s how things remained — the boy creating and distributing ever-more refined wolf content, and the villagers dutifully lapping it up. And it seemed it would carry on that way forever and ever, with everyone’s faces contorted in a state of near-permanent exhaustion and despair; the entire population locked together in this bizarre, eternal dance. And continue it did, for many, many months, until of course about a decade later when the ice caps melted and the sea level rose, drowning every last fucking one of them.
