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The Internet can be a dark place, and it got a little darker on Friday, Jan. 27 when Esquire Middle East<\/em> published an article<\/a> titled \u201cTrophy hunter eaten alive by brother of lion he shot for an Instagram post.\u201d The headline alludes to controversy, bloodshed, revenge, and a debate over trophy hunting. But there\u2019s one problem. Every element of the article is fake.<\/p>\n It appears the authors of Esquire Middle East,<\/em> which is an offshoot of popular global lifestyle magazine Esquire<\/em> with its own audience<\/a> of over 580,000 readers, stitched the story together from three unrelated and inaccurate pieces of content. They used a photograph that has circulated the Internet for years without any attribution, an unsourced story from a sketchy website, and a fictional video produced for the Australian government as part of a two-year social experiment on the effectiveness of viral content. Here\u2019s how one of the fakest hunting articles on the Internet came to be. <\/p>\n On Jan. 26 at 5 p.m., verified Twitter user Fight Haven tweeted an article from the River City Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n Trophy hunter is attacked and eaten live by the brother of the lion he\u2019s posing with for #Instagram<\/a> photos\u2026https:\/\/t.co\/g8pp3N7Fyy<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Fight Haven (@FightHaven) January 27, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The tweet caught fire quickly. By 3:30 p.m. the next day, it had 14.7 million views, 18,200 retweets, and 171,200 likes. It also had a bunch of replies, one of which would become crucial to the Esquire Middle East<\/em> story. But we\u2019ll get to that in a minute. <\/p>\n The River City Post<\/em> is a WordPress website without any semblance of organization, masthead, or identification of who\u2019s in charge. It\u2019s just a constant stream of articles with titles like \u201cMan Eliminates A 12 Year Old Kid For Throwing A Dead Snake On His Wife\u201d and \u201cKim Kardashian Gets Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree In 1 Vs. 1 Squabble With Her Sister.\u201d The posts don\u2019t have bylines, they are simply attributed to admin.\u201d The River City Post<\/em> story was published on Jan. 20 and reads:<\/p>\n \u201cA large cat [hunter\u2019s] remains were found after he was eaten by the pride of lions that he was hunting in the fields of South Africa. The Lion Hunter is widely known across Instagram for his videos and pictures showing his successful hunts. The man was heard screaming from a distance by people outside near the South African city of Phalaborwa. But the lions quickly eliminated their prey and had already eaten most of his body before being chased off, leaving his head untouched. Police at first thought the man was a tractor driver who worked nearby until they seen he was still streaming on [Instagram] Live and identified the man.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Without any sourcing, links to police reports, or further information on the Instagram account, the article-all 111 words of it-is completely unverifiable. The most real part of the post is where the author embedded an old video from CBS News detailing a similar story from February 2018, which could have been the inspiration for the article. Nowhere in the piece does it say the lion\u2019s brother ate the hunter, which is arguably the most shocking part of the headline.<\/p>\n As of Jan. 30, the tweet sharing this article had over 22 million views. The replies are riddled with debate over hunting lions and loathing for the man and woman in the article\u2019s photo. Repliers assumed the man in the photo was the Instagram-savvy lion hunter who was eaten by the dead lion\u2019s brother. In reality, we have yet to figure out who he actually is, but the picture\u2019s been used in web articles<\/a> and forum posts<\/a> going back to 2016.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for one single reply to add a whole extra layer of \u201cfake\u201d to the chaos.<\/p>\n Eventually, one Twitter user replied to the tweet with a video which shows the moments before two hunters, one a professional and one a tourist, are supposedly attacked by a lion. <\/p>\n pic.twitter.com\/YxIrdBkBQL<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 tinchocarajero \u2b50\u2b50\u2b50 (@tinchocarajero) January 27, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe Story<\/strong> <\/h2>\n
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The Video <\/h2>\n
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