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In March 2016, a number of news sites published items about a (nearly too funny to be true) accident involving a Fiat and a wall painted to look like a Looney Tunes' Road Runner-style fake tunnel: Mandatory, Jalopnik, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Atlanta television station WSB were among the news outlets that covered the purported crash, with most reports consisting solely of two to three sentences explaining that the accident was documented by a Reddit user with no independent verification of the claim. Among those outlets, only Jalopnik pointed out that the story was unauthenticated and not very plausible: As the writer observed, the short tale consisting mostly of pictures hit all the right notes for social media virality, and no one (including news outlets) seemed to care much whether it really happened. The photograph-based narrative included nostalgic references (Looney Tunes), little need for explanation, and the chance to feel superior to the unfortunate individual stupid enough to drive into a painted wall. The element of childhood memories was expressed in memes that circulated around the same time: Most people of driving age would get the joke, and of course be aware that the included image of Road Runner suggested an apparent tunnel was not to be trusted. A few posts cited a 17 December 2015 item by the British tabloid Mirror, which was a good example of most coverage of the claim: As that post noted, the image was submitted on Reddit's r/funny on 16 December 2015, and at the same time, a different user posted it with the same title to Imgur. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution described the Reddit post in this way in March 2016: However, the Reddit user didn't claim to have taken the images, nor did he or she add any information about the purported crash. In fact, that Reddit account had been used solely to post images (mostly of a pornographic nature) and seemingly shared the picture just to accrue points on the site. Despite the virality of the photographs, the user never returned to offer details of alleged incident or claim ownership of the images. The Imgur user similarly did claim to have been the source of the pictures and frequently shared images that appeared to come from other sources. At least one web site took a closer look at the images and pointed out that the chain of events suggested was easily proved false, as the various pictures weren't even photographs of the same car — the first car depicted was a Fiat Uno, and the second a Fiat Strada: Although both cars were red Fiats, the Strada featured a distinctive grill not present on the Uno, and the Uno's boxy rear was unlike the Strada's (which featured a bed). Also, the three photographs were not clearly connected to one another: In addition to the depiction of different cars, the pictures included no indication that the scene involving the crashed Strada occurred anywhere near the painting of the tunnel. A December 2015 article (published in Portuguese and translated below) pinned the original painting to Brazil, and contained two of the three images spliced together for the viral story. However, that article explained that painting had been removed in December 2015 to avoid crashes and that no such crash had occurred by the time it was painted over: As the excerpt explained, officials in the area of the mural became aware of the Internet fabrication and painted over the mural. In the short time the Road Runner tunnel painting was visible, no crashes occurred. The claim became newly viral in March 2016, several months after it appeared on Reddit, but the story was proved to be false in December 2015. Much like a similar claim about a hairdressing mishap, news outlets primarily sourced the photographs from the Internet without examining whether the backstory offered was in any way plausible.
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