A friend of mine sent me a video of what appeared to be an old newsreel, allegedly from February29, 1956, titled “Avoiding the future plague”. The piece looked pretty authentic and was predicting the future between then and now, to a tee, including the advent of Covid-19.
My sender is a serious, well rounded and educated individual who didn’t see the pure fabrication, and skilled editing behind that clip. Always a bit skeptical, I did some research and found that footage on YouTube (see below) which gave away the scheme and confessed it had been made up as a prank with archival and public domain footage acquired from Archive.org.
Too bad that the author didn’t label his piece as a humor piece, because, I’m pretty certain that many folks my age might have taken that piece of vintage news to the bank. Ten years ago, I remember being “had” on Facebook with a video showing a single engine plane landing with one wing torn off and this taught me a good lesson in critical thinking in a world of social media and fake news.
This is one more heads-up for all of us that the internet is fraught with poisonous information and that nothing should ever taken for granted. Always be wary!
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