PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2016-12-13 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Buzz Aldrin Tweeted 'We are all in Danger, it is Evil Itself'? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • On 7 December 2016, conspiracy web site SuperStation95 published a post reporting that 86-year-old astronaut Buzz Aldrin (who had just been evacuated from the South Pole due to health concerns) had mysteriously and alarmingly tweeted a photograph of a mountain along with a chilling comment: The blog post, which was a pparently inspired by a 6 December 2016 thread on the conspiracy forum Before It's News, cited two tweets as a first and second source for the photograph. One included an embedded video which referenced the SuperStation95 post as its source, making it useless as supporting confirmation: Images of the purported tweet circulated widely after 7 December 2016, but there were a number of visual cues the graphic was altered: For contrast, here's a screenshot taken of a then-recent tweet sent via Aldrin's @TheRealBuzz account: The first tweet did not have a date, share count, number of replies, number of favorites, or number of retweets; all could be used to determine whether Twitter's archive backed the claims made by the sites. Additional irregularities existed in the background display of Aldrin's account: The suspect tweet didn't display in the same manner it did in our screenshot. Aldrin's account data was oddly arranged, and his blue verification checkmark was missing. SuperStation95 did not provide a date, time, or sturdy source for the screenshot of the tweet. Using Twitter's advanced search tool, we were able to determine that no retweets or modified tweets (a form of copying and pasting a retweet) existed anywhere on Twitter. The first verbal mention of the purported tweet appeared on 8 December 2016, one day after the blog post linked above. It wasn't just skeptics questioning the authenticity of the claim. YouTube's SecureTeam (the self-described number one source for breaking news and exposure of the alien phenomenon) examined the claim, quickly dismissing it as a forgery: Superstation95's opportunistic leveraging of tragedy has never borne out as the real thing, despite the innumerable grandiose claims made since the site's inception. However, despite them, no one has yet gone to FEMA camp, the global economy has not melted down, the magnetosphere caused no space-based catastrophes, and no hikers were reported injured or dead as a result of roving Muslim shooters. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url