Well it’s that time of the year where we put down the mince pies, finish off the sherry and find out what were the most popular hoaxes of 2018, based on website traffic, social media engagement, email queries and search queries.
2018 has been one our busiest years, so first of all, a big thank you for stopping by. We’ve seen tons of Internet nonsense spread this year, so let’s get straight to it and list the top five Internet hoaxes of 2018.
Drum roll please…
In number five, we have the DragonAir Boeing 737 video that went viral across the Internet in September 2018 during the aftermath of the particularly bad 2018 Pacific typhoon season. The video claimed to show a Boeing 737 caught in strong typhoon winds when trying to land. In the video, the plane is being thrown about violently, but according to the video is manages to land safely and all passengers evacuated safely.
A dramatic video, for sure. But it wasn’t real. At least the first half showing the plane catapulting about wasn’t real. That, as it turned out, was the work of a visual effects company called MeniThings that had originally uploaded the footage to their YouTube channel. The second half of the video showing passengers on the ground being evacuated was indeed real, but was nothing to do with the first half of the video. The timing of the video – which spread after some incredibly powerful typhoons had hit the Philippines – lent the video a little credibility, and it fooled thousands – but it was ultimately fake.
You can read our write-up on the hoax here.
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Over the last few years we’ve seen a rise in scarelore rumours claiming that various products have been deliberately tainted with HIV by a disgruntled plant worker. One of the earliest examples of this was from 2011 that targeted Pepsi and Coca Cola. Other companies have been targeted since, including Anchor Butter which is largely produced in the UK, which was targeted by such malicious claims in March of 2018.
Rumours falsely claimed that a disgruntled worked infected Anchor Butter with HIV. The source of the malicious rumour is unknown, but is was completely unfounded, yet still circulated prolifically. Despite the fact that the HIV virus isn’t likely to survive in food products, this nonsense is something that is likely to target even more companies in the future. So be on the lookout!
Read our article on this hoax here.
No countdown to the biggest hoaxes of the year would be complete without some sort of ridiculous, illogical and totally baseless scare warning on Facebook, and 2018 is no different. A hoax that claimed typing in BFF as a comment to a post will reveal if your account “has been hacked” depending on whether the text turned green went viral in March, and it’s total rubbish!
Why would Facebook let you know if your account has been hacked in such a random, arbitrary way? Why have to type the letters, why couldn’t Facebook just tell you directly? These were only some of the pertinent questions that this silly warning didn’t explain.
What was really happening was that BFF (as well as other words such as “congratulations”) are special words that Facebook highlights so it can produce animations when you click on them. Nothing to do with account security whatsoever. We wrote about the hoax here.
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In a hoax that within a week managed to accumulate 10% of our entire annual traffic, here we have a viral video that apparently depicted the consequences of a student prank gone drastically wrong (or right, depending on your outlook.)
According to captions attached to this video, a student has spiked the school’s lemonade supply with laxatives. The graphic video shows the consequences of that with students running around corridors and classrooms doing exactly what you’d expect them to be doing when exposed to a high concentration of laxatives.
But was the video real? No, it wasn’t. The footage was pulled from the trailer of a Netflix comedy spoof series named American Vandal that is essentially a parody of shows like “Making a Murderer“. It was all staged. We discussed the viral video here.
2018’s biggest hoax of the year, according to our very own stats, was a copy and pasted Facebook warning that claimed “I got another friend request from you yesterday”. Which is a tad confusing since most of those who helped spread this message actually didn’t get a friend request from the people they were sending the message to.
But… they still sent it anyway. In their hundreds of thousands.
The reason, perhaps, that this was so successful is that is is based on a real threat called Facebook cloning. That’s where a crook creates a new Facebook account and uses the name, cover photo and profile picture of someone else, in effect creating a duplicate account (at least on a cursory glance.) They create this duplicate account because the next stage is to trick Facebook users of the person they’ve cloned into accepting a friend request.
So, for that reason, you certainly should be cautious if you get a second friend request from someone, since it could be a cloning scam. (Read our article here for more information.)
However that doesn’t mean you should copy and paste a message to all your friends stating you received “another” friend request from them, when you haven’t. Because that will confuse people. And confuse people this certainly did – it’s sudden popularity actually caused our website to go offline for a period of time during October because so many people were trying to find out if this message was true or not.
Yes, be cautious of Facebook cloning scam. No, don’t spread alarmist messages that make no sense. Read our article here.
That’s all for 2018. We’ll have to wait to see what 2019 has in store!