Hurricane Sandy Causes Massive Photoshop Stampede

When a massive hurricane lands in the Northeast of the United States, do you:

A.) Call your friends and family who might be involved and check in on them

B.) See what you can do to help

C.) Go online to produce and post absurd or inaccurate photos related to Sandy

Hurricane Sandy did some major damage to New Jersey, New York City, and plenty of other areas in the Northeast. Even some major websites experienced problems as their host server offices were flooded.

While most of us would like to roll with the first two answers, Monday proved that no matter what the situation is, social media will always seem to take precedent. While going through all of the news of the day, my feeds were bombarded by all of these ridiculous photos  that featured terrible Photoshop jobs with Godzilla approaching Manhattan with the waves of Sandy to complement.

/facepalm

Then we all had to endure a bunch of photos that people decide to produce, reflecting on the overall willingness for people to conduct further research. For example:

Sandy, it is not.

Alright, for one, this photo is completely fake. Yes, that storm you’re looking at is a real supercell storm from 2004. But think about how big hurricanes are. Now look at the size of this supercell – doesn’t quite add up does it? Funny enough, the fine specimens Facebook and Twitter were amazed at this “photo of Hurricane Sandy.” Double Facepalm. The real image of the storm in the right context is here

Then, people just started taking all of  this way too far:

Nope, not New York City. But people looked it once and everyone freaked out.

So let the lesson be learned that many people don’t know that Photoshop exists (with the exception of Godzilla), and that if you really want to keep fooling and exploit a terrible natural disaster, no one will question you.

If you have a heart though, make sure your friends and family in the Northeast are doing alright, will ya? Thanks.