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Friday, July 8, 2016

If it's on the internet, it's true, right?

Yahoo News is one of the worst for this, as they still have this story up:
Even though hunting is outlawed within the national parks of Zimbabwe, ten men were illegally hunting for elephants last month within the park’s boundaries when they stumbled upon twenty adult Southwest African lions. The pride of lions were not exactly, you know, expecting human visitors, so they immediately attacked the intruders. The attack was so instantaneous that five of the ten men were killed, three severely injured, and two lightly injured. The animals were mostly unhurt. The men who survived the attack ran to a nearby village for medical help where they were promptly arrested. Ah, karma!
The only problem? Utter horseshit:
The story posted above was originally published in March 2016, but it didn't gain much traction until a few months later. While it's not clear exactly why the article received a boost in popularity, it may be because Cecil the Lion was killed a year before, in July 2015. The article may have also received a bump after an anti-poaching group posted a hoax video that purported to show a lion attacking two poachers.
Regardless of the reason for the article's popularity, this is a piece of fake news from a well-known entertainment web site:
WNDR assumes however all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any persons, living, dead, or undead is purely a miracle.
Amazingly, people put this shit up all the time as if it were true. Could you please be a little more skeptical?

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