Malaysian firefighter Abu Zarin Hussin received a rude shock last week when he found out that international news agencies claimed he had married his pet snake.
Abu Zarin, 31, who is attached to the Temerloh fire station, was featured in Internet portals from around the world as well as British tabloids The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail.
The articles mistakenly identified him as a Thai man who had married his pet snake as he believed it was his dead girlfriend due to its “striking resemblance” to her…
Instead, he keeps the snakes as part of his role in the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department.
Abu Zarin conducts snake catching and training classes for firemen, who are often called up to capture the serpents by members of the public who find them in homes or public places.
Cue the ex-wife jokes.
Of course Breitbart is a fake news site that the internet needs to blacklist.
The level of mental retardation in r-selection is sometimes unbelievable. But it arises for a reason.
In K-selection, money is scarce. So when people spend it, they spend it based upon a careful assessment of quality and durability. In that environment, the selection of expenditure is based on quality. If you are going to buy a cordless drill, you will make sure it isn’t going to break down a week after you get it.
In r-selection, money is everywhere. Spending is haphazardly based on whatever people notice. In this environment, nobody even knows which product will be most durable, nor do they care. If it breaks, they will buy another. As a result, what will cause something to sell is merely people hearing about it, and having the name stick in their minds.
As a result, the r-environment rewards attention and shock, more than quality. In r-selection, the cordless drill which sells the best is the one used by Kim Kardashian to hang pictures of herself in her wall, instead of the most durable and well made. Since attention determines sales, and quality doesn’t matter, profits are actually maximized by making crap and simply hiring a celebrity to endorse it. Soon, you have newspapers grabbing pictures off facebook and making up the most ridiculous stories, just so they can get clicks.
If this was K-selection and people cared, the news organizations which got stories wrong would be dead in the water. But this is r-selection, so Newsweek makes a business decision to run a cover featuring President Hillary, and major British newspapers run fake stories about men who marry snakes because they remind them of ex-girlfriends.
It is all the decline into r-selection.
You can share the five star reviews on r/K Theory, because people get tired of fake news
[…] Firefighter Marries A Snake Because It Reminds Him Of His Dead Girlfriend? […]