Viral Videos Exposed As Fake

[Apolonio Hicks]

Viralhoaxes are an unfortunate consequence of the rise of the "viral video" in the past 20 years. For every cute, funny, wild, or outrageous video that gets millions of views, there's another one just baiting us in the shadows. The worst offenders, especially from brands, are purposefully manufactured to go viral. Others organically become a big hit after a graphic designer or two decides to have a laugh.

Either way, those of us without eagle eyes always end up coming out feeling like Booboo the Fool. But hey, after the charade is over, at least we can marvel about how far video editing has come! Or not.

In June, a clip of a terrifying theme park monstrosity started making the rounds on Twitter. The tower looks like the lovechild of someone who thinks four shots of espresso is never enough, and a sadistic child's Theme Park Tycoon creation.

The drop ride starts innocently enough, until it reaches the top of the tower. Riders then look like they're dropped in their chairs from bungee cords and whipped around faster than you can say "I'm suing you, stop the ride now!"

Sadly, you can retract that E-ticket now, since this ride doesn't exist. Well, technically it's the Gyro Drop at Lotte World in South Korea, but it also appears to be the work of an unknown person's CG version of a theme park future.

Plausibility Level: Eh. The movements are too smooth and fast to have any sense of realistic ride physics, and it's got that nebulous CGI shine to it. Still cool! Would not ride IRL if you paid me, though.

The premise was simple: a golden eagle circling a park in Montreal suddenly swoops down and attempts to latch onto a small toddler, yeeting him briefly in the air. It's every parent's worst fear: random birds trying to steal your baby to raise them as one of its own.

OK maybe not, but you have to admit that the "oh shit" of the cameraman transcends language. But alas! It was a rouse. According to Thrillist, "both the eagle and the child were created using 3D animation composited into real handheld footage. Sharp-eyed viewers were quick to discover a single frame of the video where part of the eagle's screen-left wing goes transparent."

Well in 2013, everyone was duped into thinking this girl did. The original video featured the caption "I tried making a sexy twerk video for my boyfriend and things got a little too hot :)." In the midst of a handstand, twerking against a doorframe, the girl on screen falls into a glass table, and then her leg suddenly catches fire from the candles.

This was less of a "fail" like the video advertised, and more of a "win" for late night TV, as the incredibly successful prank was actually the work of Jimmy Kimmel Live. The woman in the video is Daphne Avalon, a professional stuntwoman, and the "uncut" version of the video features Kimmel himself busting in the door and putting her out with a fire extinguisher.

Kobe Byrant, in typical Kobe fashion, slips on some Nikes and jumps over an oncoming, speeding car with ease. "That's how you do it! Hyperdunks! Do not try this at home!", he says to the camera. You can already know where this is going.

Case in point: In May 2018 a German viral video showed a group of ducks waiting patiently at a crosswalk for the light to turn green, before waddling very politely across the road. It got over 2.7 million views on Facebook and thousands of retweets on Twitter before anyone could tell that the cute and cuddly gig was up.

A Twitter account called HoaxEye, known for debunking viral content, exposed our mallard phonies as merely a "traffic educational video" made by the marketing company Ed Saarland. But what exactly were they trying to teach here? Don't walk into oncoming traffic? I'm sure we've got much more common sense than real ducks do in this case, thank you very much.

Plausibility Level: OK, come on people, this was so clearly fake. Just look at the way those duck feet moonwalk across the street like a bad Bethesda game glitch! I'm surprised they didn't T-pose when they got to the other side.

Very rarely do shark encounters ever go as epic and bloody as Shark Week commercials. But because we've all be classically conditioned by the likes of Sharknado, I think it's safe to see that any almost-encounter inspires a healthy dose of "holy shit" in most people.

Forget Area 51, it seemed like the latest creation from Boston Dynamics had broken out of the lab and walked right onto our streets. Immediately after watching Mr. Roboto over here walk up a driveway, everyone was quick to yell "oncoming robot apocalypse!"

Cool your jets everyone, because as cool as submitting to our robot overlords might be, it's not happening anytime soon. This robot video from August 2018 was actually animated using the Unity engine (usually used for hyperrealistic video game footage), and was created by the Unity Demo team for the short film Adam.

Plausibility Level: Boy does that look real. OK, maybe the shadows get a little wonky along the feet, but wow I sure was just about to accept that we suddenly advanced decades in mechanical engineering at face value.

Trump's behavior is already so goddamn weird that at this point he could do anything and we wouldn't be surprised. Spouting racism and insulting pretty much everyone is now somehow normal. So when a video went around of Trump hissing like a snake in response to a question about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in September 2018, we were all like, "sure, why not?"

In the 2011 video, the Tampa Bay Rays player suddenly makes an amazing, bare-handed catch during spring training batting practice when a ball heads straight for the interviewer's head. He doesn't even bat an eye, simply tossing the ball back and saying "guys, keep it on the field."

It's an amazing feat! The peak of human athletic performance! It's also totally fake. According to Snopes, this was just a well-planned, low-key Gillette ad made to go viral. Ugh, brands! Stop doing this underhanded nonsense, I want to know if I'm explicitly being pandered to!

Plausibility Level: Seemed wild, but plausible. Except once you notice the "Gillette" ads in the background everywhere (and the fact that the stadium is empty, no one else is around, and it's the middle of the night.)

The 2016 video shows a hawk swooping around a lake before dipping down, picking up a snake, and tossing it in the middle of a group's BBQ. First of all, zero points, since the snake didn't even make it on the grill. Second of all, minus 50 points since this video is fake as hell.

Part of a campaign called "Embrace the Hunt," this viral footage was meant to promote Australian football club, Hawthorn, and help launch its Australian Football League finals campaign. But that's uh, a pretty big stretch, guys. Hawk plus snake equals football?

While Woolshed (ugh, again?) assisted the brand's antics in video editing, some agreed that it's fine to use a viral video to promote your shit, just maybe don't lie to journalists and make them look foolish before you pull the digital curtain back.

Sage is the newest Culture writer on the block at Mashable NYC. They recently graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, and have previously worked for The Dr. Oz Show, NorthSouth Productions, and on Netflix's 'The OA Part II'. Off the clock, they can be found testing out cupcake recipes, collecting dolls, and watching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure for the millionth time.

James Jani creates documentary-style YouTube videos on topics surrounding entrepreneurship, money, and business. Within 4 short months of launching his YouTube channel, he went from a few hundred subscribers, to now over 317K subscribers (at the time of this podcast).

Some of the videos he posted recently include: "The Untold Truth About Money: How to Build Wealth From Nothing", "The Toxic World of Self Help: Hustle Culture, Toxic Positivity, Addiction, and Fake Gurus" and "The Rise of Fake Gurus: The Dark Truth Behind Making MILLIONS from Online Courses".

James talks about his sudden rise to YouTube fame and the virality of his videos, all while being quarantined in his home during COVID-19. He tells the story of how he quit acting, gave up his first company and went all-in on creating high quality YouTube content. We also talk about James' creative process for coming up with a video and how get gathers the research and writes the scripts for his videos. We also go deep into the world of "fake business gurus" and the rise in New Age Entrepreneurship that people are being sold on.

Thanks for coming this far! if you're reading this, it is no accident. The universe brought you to this corner of the internet for a reason, and you're on the right track. I already know that you're an amazing person and I can't wait to connect with you!

FactCheck.org, the nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters, is among several fact-checking organizations that will work with Facebook in helping to identify and label viral fake news stories flagged by readers on the social media network.

Kiely said FactCheck.org will be notified of stories that have been marked by Facebook users as suspicious and will provide Facebook with links to fact-checking stories if it has debunked those false claims. Other fact-checking organizations that have agreed to work with Facebook are PolitiFact, ABC News, the Associated Press, and Snopes.com.

The Webby Award-winning FactCheck.org was founded in 2003 at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania by journalist Brooks Jackson and APPC director Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

Although fake viral claims have long been circulated, fake news stories exploded on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign. Under the names of fake news organizations, writers based in Russia and Macedonia as well as the United States have produced scores of bogus stories that proliferated across the Internet and social media, generated thousands in ad revenue and altered the public conversation about what is and is not true.

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