Rant: I spent three days trying to fact-check a story about a 'haunted' Walmart in Florida

It was a video going around about a Walmart in St. Augustine where lights flickered and carts moved on their own. I thought it would be a quick debunk, maybe an hour. It took me three whole days to trace the original video back to a student film project from 2018 that someone just reposted. Has anyone else had a simple hoax turn into a huge research rabbit hole?

3 comments

3 Comments

charles7206d ago

My friend spent a week on that fake moon landing flag video.

williamw757d ago

Yeah, that "simple hoax turning into a research rabbit hole" is the internet now. I spent like two hours last week trying to find if a weird "historical" photo was real, only to find it was from a movie set. Everything gets stripped of its source and spread around like a game of telephone.

quinncoleman6d ago

Honestly, I've started doing a reverse image search first thing now. Saves so much time. If that doesn't work, I check the filename for weird codes or look for watermarks people missed. Last month I found a "haunted" painting was just a promo shot for a video game. It's all about finding that first broken link in the chain.