Man, that is some next level detective work right there. Sounds like you got played by the internet version of a magic trick, where the hand moves faster than the eye. Caught a splice like that once on a “bird flu” video where the jump cut made it look like a doctor was saying the opposite of what he actually said. I straight up deleted my whole post and felt like a clown for about a week. Now I just assume every viral clip has some sketchy edit hidden in it until proven otherwise. Makes me wonder how many other people are sharing garbage without doing the 10 minute fact check.

Totally sympathize with you there. Customers will push hard for what they want, but the tree and the science don't care about their feelings, and you're the one stuck fixing the mess. Good on you for making that your new rule, it's the only way to protect your work and your wallet.

Do you ever notice how our brains just crave that feeling of knowing exactly what's gonna happen next? Like, I swear the reason we can't sleep these days is that everything is so unpredictable, even our shows and news and stuff, so when you finally find something that's boring and predictable it's like a mental switch flips off. It's the same reason people watch those looped videos of rain or listen to the same podcast episode over and over, it's not about it being good, it's about it being safe. Your shark movie is basically a security blanket for your brain, and that's honestly genius. I bet it works even better because it's bad, so you're not tempted to stay awake to see what happens, you already know it's gonna be dumb lol. When I finally realized that, I started falling asleep to a dude doing unboxing videos for cheap gadgets, same energy, zero plot, out like a light.