That 'shocking' 3-second clip of a deer drinking from a fountain took me 2 hours to debunk

Last Tuesday I saw a viral video claiming a deer pulled a prank on a jogger at Prospect Park. It looked so real until I found the original upload from 2018, and the 'jogger' was just a guy in a deer costume from a local theater group. The creator added a fake timestamp watermark and sped up the deer's head turn. Has anyone else caught a viral animal clip that was just editing tricks, or do people really buy this stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

stellat462d ago

Actually the timestamp thing is only half of it. The bigger tell was the original video had no sound, but the viral version added jogger footsteps and birds chirping that weren't in the source footage. Once you strip the audio and overlay the two clips side by side, the deer's head turn matches the 2018 upload frame for frame.

abby_cooper2d ago

That theater group gets mentioned in Brooklyn forums every few months for these bits, but the fact people still fall for the timestamp trick says more about how we trust any little detail that looks official. We've trained ourselves to spot bad edits, but not to question the frame itself.