Personally I find it annoying how every video uploaded on youtube that seems the slightest bit unusual or outside someone’s experience and knowledge results in a chorus of ‘fake!’
I realise that this question is somewhat subjective but does anyone have any examples of videos that have been confirmed as faked that had you initially convinced they were real?
I mean those where the footage itself has been changed and distorted rather than a video being passed off as something it isn’t but otherwise being untampered with.
Basically for all the calls of ‘Fake!’ I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a convincingly faked video.
I’m aware of the fakes more often because I like to check skeptical sites on the web, so by the time I see the videos I had them spoiled…
But this one, (#5) about the bear chasing a snow boarder made me wonder, of course I found soon that it was fake, but the article points to many people that were fooled by that video. The article cited also has more examples that fooled hundreds, if not millions of viewers coming from the Australian production house The Woolshed Company.
Captain Disillusion has a whole channel debunking various videos that use fakery and tricks. But he also has videos on his channel where he chides people for being too quick to cry ‘fake’.
Is that really the case though? The videos linked to by GIGObuster were produced by a production company, a professional set-up, most people who upload videos to Youtube don’t have nearly the same resources to throw at it.
This video depicting human-powered flight (with flapping wings) completely fooled me. I recall that Jamie from Mythbusters also fell for it. It was later exposed as a hoax.
That actually is done really well. I mean, at some point common sense should kick in, but I’m impressed with the quality of the acting. Most of these “reality” videos are overdone one way or another, either by being too “amateur shaky cam” with it or by overacting, or something else, but with this one, I could actually believe it if the fact that it’s completely impossible didn’t enter my head. Apparently , a good number of people took it for real and ended up pissed off.
I guess they must be convincing, because reactions seem to consist of people either saying it didn’t work for them, or outraged denial that it can work (but the sort of outrage that often follows gullible initial belief)
