There was a time where upon hearing the news of a woman getting a third breast surgically implanted in order to become a reality TV star, one would have easily dismissed it as utter nonsense.
But in a world where trash TV is only getting trashier, and “celebrity reality stars” are more recognisable than politicians and more celebrated than influential historical figures, it could perhaps be just within the grasp of feasibility that something as ridiculous as this could just about be true.
Which is why after the story broke of a woman named Jasmine Tridevil, who had just had a third breast implanted in order to have a TV crew follow her about Tampa documenting her “struggles”, there was no shortage of mainstream media ready to report about it.
TMZ, The Daily Mail and The Huffington Post were three such sites that reported the story early on, apparently taking the entire account at face value, and allocating little time to investigating the veracity of the claims.
But it was fellow debunking site Snopes.com, who took the claims with a little more scepticism, that appear to be amongst the first to poke a few holes in the story, namely the connection between photos of Jasmine Tridevil and that of one Alisha Hessler, a known hoaxer who has also orchestrated media-grabbing hoaxes in the past.
The brand new jasminetridevil.com domain, registered with GoDaddy this year, was registered under the name Alisha Hessler (yes, we checked, and it is) and one only needs to perform an Internet search of the Hessler name to see that Hessler and Tridevil are the very same person.
Hessler, however, having the ordinary number of breasts.
Knowing that Tridevil (okay, we always knew that wasn’t her real name) is actually Hessler, a known hoaxer who doesn’t seem to shy away from any chance of grabbing a few media headlines, is does appear doubtful that the “3 breast” story is real, especially considering almost all photos and videos of her chest have come from homemade material.
The entire story goes to show how the Internet can be used to propagate hoaxes and even fool mainstream media. One could argue that the line between fact and fiction is becoming blurred, replaced in importance by online perception and a good eye-catching headline.
Whilst we express our own doubt, at the time of writing Hessler/Tridevil is sticking to her story, claiming she has the operation on tape, soon to be shown on her new reality TV show… do you believe the “3 Breasts” story? Let us know in the comments below.
UPDATE:
It seems Hessler, the hoaxer, has been the subject of a hoax herself, orchestrated by somebody else. In this case, fake news website Huzlers, who published a fake story that asserts Tridevil/Hessler was found dead in her home following a row. Huzlers is a popular fake news site that accumulates traffic by writing bogus news reports on popular or trending items.
