By Maria Rantanen and Nono Shen
Jerry Guo has become the poster child for coronavirus on Chinese social media — even though he definitely doesn’t have the virus and hasn’t been to Wuhan, China. He lives in Richmond and sells cars at Cowell VW at the Richmond Automall.
But when a photo of him dropping his girlfriend off at the Vancouver International Airport was taken and posted on Facebook and used as an illustration of a story about face masks, it then started making the rounds on different “self-media” sites — Chinese websites that largely aggregate news.
An Ontario-based news aggregate website, known as 51.ca (pronounced “JiaGuoWuYou in Chinese), used Guo’s picture as their latest top story’s cover photo. The headline read: “Breaking News! One more case of coronavirus confirmed in Canada. The male patient has been to Vancouver last week!”
The story was published on Tuesday and quickly got 409,000 clicks.
After some ribbing from his colleagues at work and friends on social media – with Guo initially thinking it was funny that he was “famous” - he started getting worried that his customers wouldn’t approach him as he was selling cars, assuming he had coronavirus.
As the hits continued to grow on the self-media sites — with stories of the first case of coronavirus in B.C. — his photo was used on dozens of self-media sites to illustrate stories about coronavirus.
Many self-media sites used screenshots of the Richmond News’ stories with Guo’s photo, which he claims adds legitimacy to their stories. But he said these stories weren’t necessarily accurate, and it made it look like he had coronavirus.
When Guo reached out to the self-media sites, they told him it would be difficult to take the picture down — something he knows from friends who have self-media sites not to be true. He even contacted a lawyer, but it would have cost him $1,000 to just have a letter written.
Guo questioned the motivation of self-media sites, saying he thinks they just want to make money.
“I don’t know if I can call them reporters,” he said.
He was “furious” that the websites wouldn’t take down his picture and he said it was probably because of the thousands of hits they had received on the sites — which then sell advertising.
Guo said it might be time for him to get a haircut and a new coat.
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