Gilbert Araujo, a Brazilian car washer, was thought to have been murdered. Or at least that’s what his family thought after Gilberto’s brother wrongly identified him. His brother said he hadn’t seen Gilberto in four months and the man that was murdered was also a carwasher and looked a lot like Gilberto.
Gilberto found out about his “death” only after an acquaintance he ran into informed him that his family was having a funeral, and he was in the coffin. He tried calling others who were at the wake, and after no success, he decided to show up in person.
I picked this article because of how humorous it is… It’s not funny that a man did end up dying, but the fact that he was wrongly identified by his own brother I found a bit ludicrous.
As always, I find this story to be a bit news worthy because of the rarity of it. How often do people get to show up at their own wake, their own funeral? Never. This was a BBC News story in the Latin American section, and thankfully wasn’t a headliner. This story link didn’t ven have a picture beside it. That’s good, don’t get me wrong- it’s a good story, but it doesn’t deserve to be a big story. This article doesn’t apply to anyone outside of the family that was involved, and the family of the man who was murdered. It’s about a Brazil man, so the article doesn’t fall into the proximity class of news values. It doesn’t have a big impact.
I find it to be a relatively funny story, perhaps a human interest or feel-good story for people to read when they don’t feel like dealing with all the other tragic news. The rarity and the human interest of it all makes it a bit of a news-worthy story, but not fully. That’s where BBC got it straight- they didn’t headline it, they didn’t advertise it much- it was a plain link to the story, no jazz added to it.
To read the full article, click here.
Stories that play on rarity are fun for a variety of reasons. They can be humorous or play on other emotions. More importantly, I think, they get us away from other stories — the election — that seem to suck up all the attention.