photo, or it didn't happen

"something smells fishy here."

"people say 'believe half of what you see, son, and none of what you hear...'"

~ norman whitfield and barrett strong

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this image just showed up on my FB feed.

at first glance, it looked like someone was about to get an earful of baleen.

amazing! spectacular! omg, can you imagine?!?

at second glance, it looked like a clever (but obvious) bit of photoshoppery.

it's a fake. it's photoshopped. here are the two original images.

it's a fascinating social/media experiment; how long does it take for people to debunk even the most innocuous image/story/video?

the over/under is about 5 minutes.

i mean, i get it: in a bored, overhyped, undersubstanced world, people love the unexpected. but they want it to be real ~ and they don't like to be duped.

still...part of me misses a time when i could be surprised by the unlikely or the unknown without immediately thinking, "nope."