Remember the snowboarder who got chased by a bear? What about the guy who had a close call with a great white shark in Sydney Harbour? Or maybe you saw the video of a guy’s reaction to his girlfriend nearly getting struck by lightning?
Well, an Australian company has come clean, telling the world what many of us already expected – they were all fake.
Yup, The Woolshed Company, a film production firm based in Melbourne, created fake videos – eight to be exact – for two years with the intention of them going viral and fooling people around the world.
Mission accomplished.
While some of the videos were clearly fake, they were still debated on the news even if they weren’t covered seriously.
And in a statement issued on the company website, they said the debate around each video’s authenticity helped to spread them further.
The Woolshed Company claimed the ‘social experiment’ received more than 205 million views across 180 countries and 1.6 million ‘Likes’ on Facebook. Or, in other words, it screwed with a lot of people.
The company explained on its website:
We set out to better understand exactly how to create short-form, highly sharable, ‘snackable’ content, that is capable of reaching worldwide mass audiences without the luxury of pricey media buys, ad campaigns, publicity strategies or distribution deals.
Wondering which ones duped you? Here are the eight videos that managed to fool the world (if you don’t have a keen eye for fake videos):