Internet users in November 2015 logged into their Facebook or Reddit accounts to see a pretty grisly set of photos had managed to go viral.
Apparently taken in a backyard in San Jose by Gianna Peponis, the photos showed what appeared to be some alien-like two legged creature, and it has social media users speculating on all sorts of possibilities. Needless to say, extra-terrestrial was a prevailing opinion amongst many.
Opinions you’d expect to hear from Fox Mulder from The X-Files were encouraged, since the Facebook user who posted the photos, Gianna Peponis, purporting the photos were taken soon after the recent “UFO sightings” that turned out to be an unmanned missile flying across California state. She also claimed that Facebook were actively trying to remove the photos from their site to “stop the truth” coming out.
The photos, posted by Gianna… blurred out as they contain graphic detail.
So Facebook is trying to delete these photos which were taken in California of this mystery creature or “alien” right around where that UFO sighting was recorded!!!!!!
MAKE THIS SHIT GO VIRAL!!!
I wasn’t gunna post this but I can’t stop trying to figure out wtf this thing is.. I heard something scream at like 11.30 last night and went on my side yard and found this thing. It was dead when I found it.. Share with your friends
So, let’s take a look at the claims…
The very first claim is that Gianna Peponis took the photos in the first place, and even this appears to be untrue. Gianna uploaded the photos on November 7th, but two days prior, they were uploaded by another user from Missouri on November 5th.
The user from Missouri had simply asked what people thought the creature was that they had found in their backyard, and did not mention aliens, UFOs, California, screams or any mention of Facebook trying to remove the photos.
Thus it appears that the photos had been stolen by the Facebook user Gianna Peponis, who attached a lot of misinformation to them so as to help them spread across social media, and as such they went viral, gaining more reach than the originally uploaded set of photos.
This also negates the claim that the photo is linked in any way to the recent “UFO” sighting in California that turned out to be an an unmanned missile that was announced before it even took off by LAX airport.
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As is always the way with photos that purport to show photos of extra-terrestrials, the body of the creature is unavailable for examination. Reports that the body had been buried and was thus unavailable for critical evaluation immediately had sceptics dismissing the photos as bunk.
But it wasn’t long before the actual nature of the creature was already established. The photo bears a strong (very strong) resemblance to aborted foetuses of calves that you can find elsewhere on the Internet, although this one appeared to have been ripped apart, possibly by predators, leaving its bottom half missing.
The popular claim that Facebook are trying to remove a specific photo is a popular modus operandi employed by spammers to increase the circulation of content across the site, though we’ve never seen a case where the claim is actually true.
And this is the case here. There is no evidence that Facebook are removing the photo, which is demonstrated by the clear fact that the photo is all over Facebook.
The fake news industry took hold of the story and reported a fake story about Gianna Peponis being found dead, with the clear implication that she was killed by shadowy government figures hellbent on keeping “the truth from coming out”. Of course this was nonsense and obviously the author of the story was unaware that Gianna didn’t even take the photos in the first place.
We discussed the story on ThatsFake.com here.
So despite all the hype and misinformation surrounding the “San Jose Two-Legged Alien”, the reality is much more mundane. No Facebook are not removing the photos. No the person who took the photos wasn’t found dead. No it wasn’t linked to the “UFO” sighting. No, it’s not an alien.
In reality, it was part of a calf foetus discovered in Missouri, and that’s about it.
