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I don’t think it’s hard to see what happened. The writer included the comment about porn because it was salacious and because he knew it would be reprinted, and what journalists want above else is for their writing to be read. On the other hand, after it went viral, he received a lot of angry and upset messages (no doubt delivered via Starlink) from the villagers he had been staying with for a month and who had trusted him to report on them complaining that they were being humiliated in the Brazilian press (which, again, they can now read and watch) because of his article. So he felt bad and wrote this follow-up.
...Blaming it all on other people who read it exactly like he wanted them to...
Kinda low, no?
Your friend annoys you so you call her a whore in front of your other mutual friend, exaggerating some relatively tame story in the process, expecting that this will remain a minor anecdote that will do no real harm to her reputation. Then said mutual friend decides for her own purposes to spread this news far and wide, without any context, with some embellishments (you said she fucked her boyfriend in a club bathroom, the rumor is now that she does this with many men all the time) and then your friend calls you crying telling you you ruined her life and you’re evil.
Change the scenario and most people have been in some version of this situation.
I feel a certain tension between deliberately making the story more salacious, and expecting it to do no real damage.
In any case "feeling bad" and making amends by blaming the mutual still seems pretty low to me.
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