Posted on 10 Feb 2014

14 Incredible But Fake Viral Images — And The Twitter Account Debunking The Picspammers

Everybody loves mind-blowing images on Twitter — but not many people check if they're real. Meet the Twitter account that's taking on that task.

by Tom Phillips

BuzzFeed Staff, UK

Incredibly, mind-blowing, jaw-dropping viral picture feeds are all over Twitter. They post images that are beautiful, fascinating, moving...and often complete nonsense. But there's help at hand — the @PicPedant Twitter account is trying to kick back against the factory line approach these accounts take to spreading images — one of many attempts to make fact-checking go as viral as the fact-free.

Discovery images@DiscoveryImages Follow
Cliff Castle Ruins, Germany
04:30 PM - 29 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

PicPedant@PicPedant Follow
.@DiscoveryImages AHAHAHAHAHAHA [repeat] That is Kilurchin Castle, Scotland, photoshopped onto Preikestolen, Norway: https://t.co/tJn5A6SviM
04:35 PM - 29 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

Fascinating Pictures@Fascinatingpics Follow
Long exposure photo of a Lightning Bolt hitting a Tree!
10:41 PM - 6 Feb 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

PicPedant@PicPedant Follow
.@Fascinatingpics Nope, light painting art by @DariusTwin: http://t.co/NXqRjb53Vr
10:45 PM - 6 Feb 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

@PicPedant is run by one man, Paulo Ordoveza. "I used to run an urban legend debunking site called pula.ph in the Philippines, waaaay back in the late '90s and early aughts," he told BuzzFeed by email. But, he says, "it petered out after a while because I insisted on making everything longform and I didn't have the time or energy to devote pages of text to scads of repetitive email forwards."

He doesn't just deal with fakes on the account — he also corrects misattributed images, or real images without a credit for the photographer.

History In Pictures@HistoryInPics Follow
Race of double deck buses, 1933
12:23 PM - 31 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

PicPedant@PicPedant Follow
.@HistoryInPics Via the National Archief, The Hague, Netherlands: http://t.co/Fd1BRMKG7X â€” a fairly obvious 1930s paste-and-airbrush job.
12:27 PM - 31 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

SPACE PORN@GoogleSpacePorn Follow
How the sky looks during a space shuttle launch at night. Just Magnificent.
11:46 PM - 21 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

PicPedant@PicPedant Follow
.@GoogleSpacePorn Not a Space Shuttle. Atlas V rocket launching RBSP satellites 2 years after last shuttle mission: http://t.co/t1NE1L2sB7
12:15 PM - 30 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

Which accounts are the worst offenders for tweeting fake images? "Anything with 'google', 'earth', or 'porn' in the title seems to be pretty bad about churning out misleading captions and nonattribution," he says. "I'm not even going to bother with the accounts that just regurgitate Reddit/9GAG memes..."

His favourite topic for debunking is anything to do with space: "My heart's always been with spaceflight and astronomy."

Earth Pics@EARTHPlCS Follow
The Himalayas from space.
01:22 AM - 31 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

PicPedant@PicPedant Follow
.@EARTHPlCS [repeat] Nope, 3D computer rendering by Christoph Hormann: http://t.co/ufCmr4Vj1B | http://t.co/sPme8kqMfH
01:23 AM - 31 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

SPACE PORN@GoogleSpacePorn Follow
Black Knight Satellite
12:46 PM - 24 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

PicPedant@PicPedant Follow
.@GoogleSpacePorn That's a thermal blanket that drifted off the Space Shuttle Endeavour during an EVA on STS-88. http://t.co/B6bANvgfH1
12:13 PM - 30 Jan 14 Reply Retweet Favorite

Why does he think people are so keen to share images, regardless of their accuracy? "Myth and fantasy are powerful forces, and even more powerful is that little endorphin rush one can get from finding a diamond in the rough, a precious little secret that pops out at you from your Twitter Home stream, minimally and pithily captioned in a way that captures your mind and imagination, just so.

"Never mind, of course, that about a million other followers have seen it too; this is yours, this pleasurable feeling of resonance with the past, or with a stranger, or with the natural world, or with the universe, or with a cute animal. When someone comes barging in on that feeling with 'TOTALLY SHOPPED AND STOLEN FROM 500PX LOL' I can understand someone feeling defensive over it.

"And meanwhile, the picspammers have learned how to seize on that feeling, and how to leverage it toward affiliate link profit."