Viral Social Media Post Leads to Farmers’ Pepper Fields Getting Looted En Masse

Original article on OddityCentral.com – a blog on oddities and wacky news http://www.odditycentral.com/

A number of chili pepper farmers in Shaanxi, China, saw their fields looted by complete strangers after a viral social media post claimed that the chilies were free for the picking.

Imagine working for the better part of a year on raising your chili pepper crop, only to see it all stolen by random strangers, all because of a fake social media post gone viral. That’s exactly the situation that several farmers in Liujiangou village were in earlier this month, when they woke up to find dozens of people casually looting their fields and claiming that they had every right to do so.

It turns out that a man whose name has not been revealed by police had posted a message on social media offering anyone the chance to pick as many chili peppers from the thousands of acres around Liujiangou village, because the farmer who planted them had decided to give them away rather than sell them at a loss.

“In Liujiagou Village, there are thousands of acres of chili peppers. Whoever picks them owns them,” the man in the video said. “The boss spent 30,000 yuan just to hire workers to pick the chili peppers, but could only sell the peppers for 18,000 yuan.”

The viral video turned out to be fake. There wasn’t a single farmer with a huge chili plantation, but several small farmers who saw their work stolen in front of their eyes. Yang, a local farmer who had planted approximately 33 acres of peppers, told CCTV that he was in the process of finding customers for his crop, but he had never told anyone that he was giving away the chilies for free.

Yang was one of the first to find strangers in his field, filling their bags and crates with his produce, and because he couldn’t reason with them, he called the police. Upon hearing that the chilies were, in fact, not free for the picking, some of the people who had seen the viral video left their haul and left peacefully, but others drove away in their cars or on scooters, leaving the farmers to bear the loss.

An investigation revealed that the information propagated through the viral social media video was a rumor. After the incident, the farmers immediately filed complaints with the police, and the rumor-monger was identified and brought into custody. The person was administratively detained for seven days, and they have since reached a settlement with the farmers, agreeing to pay them 5,000 yuan ($700) for their loss.

Interestingly, just last month, we featured a very similar story about a Polish farmer who saw his potato crop stolen by strangers who had seen a viral social media video that claimed his potatoes were free for the taking.

The post Viral Social Media Post Leads to Farmers’ Pepper Fields Getting Looted En Masse first appeared on Oddity Central – Collecting Oddities.