Onbetrouwbare vertellers binnen en buiten het boek.

On social media platforms, we are bombarded with small stories, which
end up in unpredictable contexts with unforeseen recipients, who actively
shape the narrative and become co-authors. As an effect, the unreliable
narrator – once a concept reserved for literary criticism – is everywhere. I
argue for an expansion of narratological frameworks to better understand
the dynamics of trust and unreliability in platformed attention economies,
by looking at three domains: platforms, fiction/non-fiction hybrids, and real
readers. I illustrate these through the case of the short story ‘Trainer’ (Coach,
2016) by Pim Lammers. Through my analysis of this controversy, I explore the
implications of the blurred boundaries between fictional and non-fictional
narratives, with particular attention to how readers attribute moral and
ideological reliability to authors, narrators, and characters. This allows me
to reflect on broader societal challenges around narrative competence,
media literacy, and what I call ‘weaponized narrative incompetence’ – the
strategic misreading of stories for rhetorical purposes