This time of year, many people take vacations. They often go to the beach or a retreat back in the mountains. But it appears some people are not taking a vacation this year. They are just too busy making fake bigfoot news. It seems in the last few weeks there has been an extremely large amount of totally fake, and in some cases ridiculous, reports of dead bigfoot.
Most of these reports are coming from what is clearly a "pull a prank" site. It even states it at the bottom of the website. For many of us, we realize these are untrue reports that are made as a joke. That it is just for fun and not to be taken serious.
But there is only one problem with that....
The problem with it is that there are a large number of people who actually believe these fake reports. I guess that is why it is funny to some people. They are the ones who are maybe not a bigfoot researcher and are just maybe what they call an "armchair" researcher. I know when the report about Virginia residents being warned about bigfoot came out, I was tagged in many post on Facebook and received a lot of messages about it. Of course, I knew it was a fake report and let the people know that it was from a joke site.
Another problem I can see with some of these fake news post is that there is potential to slander or damage fellow researchers. For example, if someone posted a bogus report and named several popular researchers, and some people believed it and trust me some will, then the story was outed as a hoax, the reputation of the named researchers would be damaged. Once a person's reputation is damaged it is almost impossible for them to repair it. And it might not just be a particular person, it could be a group. That group would lose part of its reputation, part of its followers. This could cause them to lose some of their funding, due to less youtube and website views, and make it difficult for them to continue to conduct research.
So, if you are creating one of these popular fake bigfoot post, I urge you to please be respectful to fellow researchers and research groups. There is generally a lot of drama in the bigfoot communities and I hope everyone uses restraint and don't intentionally try to damage someones reputation.
As for the pictures featured at the top of this page. They are not of bigfoot. The little baby dead bigfoot is a prop you can buy on ebay. I have seen it on there several times. I also saw a new post this morning on facebook of a "dead bigfoot" being lifted on a stretcher out of a dug spot in the ground. The bigfoot on the stretcher was also fake. It was one of the popular costumes.
Thanks
~Tom~
This post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto Crew. Over 20 years experience with research and investigation of unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild land firefighter and a published photographer, and poet.
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Tom, you made some good points and I can't dispute any of them. But, IMO, this is a minute problem compared to the "fake news" (i.e, hoaxes, questionable evidence, "blobsquatches", bogus videos, etc,) that have been foisted on the public for years via YouTube, bigfoot websites, bigfoot blogs,Facebook bigfoot groups and bigfoot forums. I think it's important to keep things in perspective.
ReplyDeleteyep hoaxing is not going away, thats for sure. I just see the potential in this "create a prank" site to really damage a person. Normally if a person pulls a hoax, the damage is mostly self inflicted but with this you could really hurt someones rep. Thanks for the comment.
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