The Internet went wild on Monday when a tri-breasted woman who identified as Jasmine Tridevil (and bore a striking resemblance to a character in the sci-fi film Total Recall) posted pictures of herself on social media showing off her new appendage. Tridevil claimed she had reached out to more than 50 doctors to perform the surgery before finding one to do it for $20,000. And, shockingly, she said she had hired a camera crew in an attempt to land a reality television role. It was the stuff of sensationalist media legend—and, to the relief of some and the disappointment of others, a photoshopped hoax.
wtsp.com
Humans have long upheld the belief that animals can predict natural disasters. So when a YouTube video surfaced showing bison fleeing Yellowstone National Park in anticipation of a volcanic eruption, panic ensued. The video, titled “ALERT! Yellowstone Buffalo Running for Their Lives!” and published last spring, attracted nearly 2 million views in two weeks—until a Yellowstone spokesperson clarified that the bison were running toward the park, not away from it.
via Youtube
In one of the most elaborate and nefarious hoax in recent years, Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o fell in love with a woman online who didn’t actually exist, though their romance—and his made-up girlfriend’s death—dominated headlines for weeks. After receiving news that his grandmother and his girlfriend, “Lenny Kekua,” had passed away, Te’o led Notre Dame to an epic victory against Michigan State. He subsequently appeared on ESPN’s College GameDay to gush about the letters Kekua had written him when she was dying of cancer. But the story began unraveling when her elusive identity was called into question. Te’o eventually claimed he was the victim of “someone’s sick joke and constant lies.” Speculation that the football player had created the hoax himself persisted, but the story soon disappeared.
Jonathan Daniel/Getty
In the spring of 2013, filmmaker and loudmouth leftist Michael Moore seemed poised to release his next documentary: Fappy, about a stuffed animal dolphin preaching the anti-masturbation movement in schools across America. The news came with a dubious press release calling masturbation a “gateway drug to rape” and a supposed tweet from Moore confirming Fappy’s premise and release date. No surprise that the whole thing was a hoax, though it was never clear whether Moore was in on the joke.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel fooled multiple media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, The View, and Today, when he posted a video on YouTube of a twerking “home video” gone wrong, when one gyrating move lands the twerker on a table ablaze with atmospheric candles. Some 9 million people watched the video of “Caitlin Heller,” which ends with the immolation of her yoga pants, before Kimmel confessed to the ruse.
via Youtube
In 2006, a 16-year-old girl named “Bree”—better known as Lonelygirl15—amassed a large following on YouTube (more than a million viewers) with her cryptic video diaries, in which she professed to be ensnared in a religious cult. But Lonelygirl15’s story seemed contrived, her videos staged, fueling speculation that they were a marketing ploy promoting the next Blair Witch Project-type film. A screenwriter and two filmmakers from California eventually revealed themselves as the masterminds behind the hoax.
Proving that there is no story too absurd and far-fetched for media coverage, CNN once reported that Bigfoot’s body had been found by “a pair of Bigfoot hunting hobbyists” in North Georgia. One of the “hunting hobbyists” ultimately confessed to the prank.
Bigfoot Global LLC
Last December, when the polar vortex began rearing its head in parts of the U.S., some Facebook and Twitter users were convinced that the world was going into deep freeze when images of snow-covered pyramids began circulating on social media. Of the thousands of users who shared the photos, an alarming number believed them to be proof of global warming’s extreme weather—and likely removed the images from their timelines when they realized they had made an embarrassingly wrong judgment.
Reality-TV producer Elan Gale provoked a media frenzy when he tweeted his epic fight with “Diane” aboard a flight after Thanksgiving, which ended with Gale telling her to “Eat My Dick.” BuzzFeed reported the feud in a chronological recap of Gale’s tweets, and, naturally, Alec Baldwin tweeted his support for Gale, who amassed nearly 170,000 followers from the ordeal. But it was Gale who had the last laugh, later admitting that Diane was fake and it was all for shits and giggles. “Once I woke up the next morning on Friday and realized people were reporting this as news, I thought it was the craziest thing I had ever seen,” he later told ABC News.
via Twitter
