If you can’t believe everything you see on TV, you should probably believe even less on the internet. Fake news is a real thing, with all kinds of reasons behind it.
Some want to sway your opinion or further entrench you in your views, while others just want laughs. But there are ways to see through the trickery: always consider the source, and always look behind the scenes to see how likely it all is.
And remember, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
John Lennon and Che Guevara jamming.
Never. Happened.
Only the miracle of Photoshop ever brought these two together. Che Guevara died in 1967, a full five years before this photograph of Lennon — actually jamming with Tex Gabriel before somebody digitally glued Che’s face over his — was even taken.
Elephants thinking humans are cute like puppies.
Sounds nice, but it’s too good to be true. Well, it could be true, but no studies have ever turned up any findings about elephants seeing humans like puppies.
A coyote being mistaken for a dog and given a bath.
Wouldn’t that be funny if it was true? It’s not though. Well, the animal in the bath is actually a coyote, but it was never mistaken for a dog — it’s a pet coyote.
Blue strawberries, created by splicing fish genes into them.
Not even Willy Wonka could manufacture something so odd. Blue strawberries are as phony as can be, and if anybody tries to sell you packets of blue strawberry seeds, tell them where to go and how to get there.
Police raising the hoods of their cars to obstruct their dash cams.
Okay, the police vehicles clearly have their hoods up, which would prevent their dash cams from recording anything. But the hoods are up to keep electronics in the car from overheating and melting on a hot day.
A heavily tattooed Jimi Hendrix driving around in a dune buggy.
Jimi did indeed enjoy a trip out in a dune buggy, but he wasn’t all inked up like that. Not that there’s anything wrong with having lots of ink. He just didn’t.
The Marbled Fuark.
The discovery of a fabled furry stag like this would be newsworthy, for sure, but no such thing was discovered. In fact, the “Marbled Fuark” in the photo was a figurine created by artist Lee Cross .
A letter from the University of Bern rejecting Albert Einstein as a doctoral candidate and associate professor in 1907.
Einstein was actually turned down by the University of Bern back in 1907, but not with this letter. Why would a Swiss university, where German is a dominant language, write to a German-speaking candidate in English? And that’s just one of many mistakes .
The “blackest and whitest” people.
The contrast is stark, for sure, but these are not the “blackest and whitest” people in the world. They’re models in makeup for a magazine shoot.
Female wolves appearing to cower to protect their mate’s throat.
It’s a great story, but it’s not accurate. Such behavior has not been seen in wolves, and even in this pic, they’re all males. One is just bumping into another.
Revenge for parking in a handicap spot.
Who doesn’t love the idea of shaming someone for parking in a handicap spot? Well, this isn’t exactly routine in Brazil — the sticky notes were put there by a bunch of pranksters for a comedy channel, although it’s unclear whether the driver was in on the gag or not.
McDonald’s food doesn’t rot.
That’s not to say this post is necessarily lying — indeed this food might not have rotted over the six years claimed, but it’s not about the chemicals, it’s about the conditions . Experiments have shown that even burgers made at home won’t rot if they’re dried out quickly. So it’s certainly weird, but not uncommon or unique to fast food.
This supermoon appearing to line up perfectly with a radio telescope’s dish.
![Image credit: Reddit | [deleted]](https://static.diply.com/Uf01fWvfqxyNXnUmB30u.jpg)
Seems like a perfectly timed image, with the moon perched in the dish like a big red ice cream cone. It’s actually two images stitched together by photographer Chris Pegman.
Flu shots causing the flu virus to spread.
Consider your sources, folks. Horses leave more credible lumps in a barn yard than the Facebook page spreading this stinker about a CDC doctor warning about the flu shot. People shared it far and wide because it played on their fears, but this is not a reliable source — one of the other headlines on the page reads “Dave Chappelle’s Family Claim Star Was Killed And Cloned By Illuminati,” for crying out loud.
Being stabbed for having a “Neo-Nazi” haircut.
Joshua Witt went viral in 2017 after posting bloody pics on Facebook claiming he’d been attacked in a parking lot over his “Neo-Nazi” haircut. Bigger media outlets like Fox News and Inside Edition picked up on the story, but when the police investigated, details didn’t add up. Police did make an arrest, however: of Joshua himself, after he admitted he had stabbed himself and made it all up.
A restaurant serving human meat.
I know, this kind of outlandish claim has to be fake, right? It sure is. But the restaurant targeted almost had to close because of this ridiculous report, which was made on a site called Channel23News.com, a prank news site anyone can use to make up a real-ish sounding story of their own and spread it around.
Radiohead fans mistaking the band tuning their guitars for a new hit song.
Well, this could definitely be satire, or just somebody digging at Radiohead fans, but this isn’t a real headline from BBC News . Even though it’s made to look like an article from the Beeb , there’s no evidence that fans at Glastonbury were fooled by the band tuning their instruments. And yet it still got thousands of retweets!
An undetected planet called Niburu will hit Earth and end life as we know it.
What would fake news be without a good apocalypse conspiracy theory? Sadly, enough people believed this nonsense that NASA had to release a statement debunking it, as well as other end-of-the-world stories.
Selfitis, the selfie-obsession mental health disorder.
You know what? Some people like to take a lot of selfies. It’s true. It’s true enough that even reputable media outlets spread the idea of a mental health disorder surrounding an obsession with selfies, called selfitis . The American Psychiatric Association recognizes no such thing, however. It started with a satirical news article that did inspire real research, but that research doesn’t call an obsession with selfies a mental health disorder.
Kentucky Fried Rat.
In 2015, a Facebook user posted a photo (since deleted) of the meal he’d just received at KFC claiming he had been served fried rat. Well, it fooled a lot of people because of its shape, but DNA tests proved that it was chicken after all.
Google Earth finds a woman stranded on a deserted island for seven years.
This story claimed that a woman named Gemma Sheridan was the victim of a shipwreck in the Pacific and was only saved by some kid in Minnesota surfing Google Earth who spotted her SOS sign. However, the details in the story were taken verbatim from an Amazon explorer’s experience who survived 60 days on a deserted island, and the image they used was from Kyrgyzstan. So yeah, big hoax.
This image of a fawn cuddling up with this practice target obviously affected someone deeply.
So much so that they started spreading this story about the fawn mistaking it for its mother.
However, the original photographer would later explain that this person left out the part where the deer’s mother returned moments after this was taken.
If you’ve seen this picture before, you’ve likely been told that it comes from a sex-ed class in 1929.
However, if the reactions seem a little too intense, that’s likely because it’s actually a still from the movie The Wild Party starring Clara Bow, who is front and center in this photo.
They are right that the movie came out in 1929, though.
People like stories of satisfying revenge, so it’s no surprise that this story of a worker wrecking his boss’ Benz after getting stiffed for a couple of months caught on.
Unfortunately, it’s also a complete fabrication because this clip actually comes from a car insurance commercial from 2013.
This photo was presented as an example of the ravages that L’Oreal has inflicted on animals through product testing.
Fortunately, it seems that the people at L’Oreal can rest easy after it was soon revealed that this rabbit’s affliction came from an ear mite called psoroptes cuniculi and this photo was taken soon after treatment started.
Someone decided to make a big splash by claiming that this plane crashed on their street.
However, it turned out that this was a junk plane that ended up in an unspecified neighborhood a week before they claimed this sudden crash happened.
Oops.
Some topical fibber was saying that this big Winnie the Pooh sticker recently appeared in Hong Kong.
Since the Chinese government started to censor images of the bear after he was used to make fun of the nation’s leader, Xi Jinping, it seemed plausible enough.
However, a closer look at this photo reveals signs that it was Photoshopped.
When someone characterized this photo as a girl posing inappropriately with her dying grandmother, outrage ensued.
However, it appears we can put our pitchforks down because the “dying grandmother” is actually the girl’s aunt who was in the hospital for a simple procedure.
More importantly, she consented to this photo and it was part of a light-hearted series the girl intended to keep her aunt’s spirits up. It turns out, the aunt has a good sense of humor.
A raccoon riding an alligator.
Although someone submitted this pic to local news in Florida with an explanation, the supposed photographer never responded to any requests to get in touch to confirm the photo’s authenticity. However, a known social media prankster did take credit for the pic later, saying that both the raccoon and the alligator were taxidermied, and showed the Washington Post pics of herself setting it all up.
A waterslide towering over Dubai.
Sure, this would be the world’s tallest water slide, but it’s definitely a fake — digital artist Robert Jahns cooked it up. You can even see his signature faintly near the top of the image.
Groomsmen holding up a paralyzed groom to kiss his bride.
Sounds sweet, and it’s easy to want this to be true, but nope. The groom is able-bodied, and he and his groomsmen are just ” locking up ” for a frat pose.
