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Trap daddy

Victor Mair, Language Log, Jul 12, 2022

The story here is that a fraudster created an entire fake history of Russia in the Chinese language version of Wikipedia, where "some places and people are completely made up, while other stories are linked and interwoven with reality", but the fun part of the article is what the hoax was called: a 坑爹 ( kēngdiē), which as Victor Mair says is "a slang neologism used to signify "dishonest; fraudulent; deceptive; be contrary to what one expected." It is also "a Chinese internet slang word that directly translates as hole (坑 kēng), which here means "cheat," and dad (爹 diē). In other words, to do something to cheat or make life difficult for your dad." In other words, a 'trap daddy'. Anyhow, the damage from this particular trap daddy was significant: "So many professors and students in China have been deceived. There are at least 100 dissertations that have quoted false information." Image: Mengniang Encyclopedia.

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