Know Your Meme

Of Course, MSNBC Did Not Use Footage From "World War Z" In Protest Coverage

June 5th, 2020 - 11:10 AM EDT by Matt Schimkowitz

2 comments

Despite what you might have heard on the "internet," MSNBC did not air footage of the 2013 zombie film World War Z during their Philadelphia protest coverage. The footage that's been going Twitter comes from @OfficialSlop, who posted the video as a joke.

@OfficialSlop, who posted the video in late May, has since spent the past week debunking their work, which is maybe the most responsibility anyone has ever on the internet. They even wrote "not real" next to the watermark. What more do you want, people?

Still, the video snowballed out of their control and went viral on Twitter, Facebook and conspiracy theory forums. Soon, the AP reached out to @OfficialSlop (which is kind of a great thing to write) who confirmed that "the video was fabricated."

The original clip has since been removed by its creator who "dramatically underestimated Twitter," but can still be found on YouTube. It features an obviously fake report.

However, just because something is fake, that doesn't mean people won't take it as fact. @OfficialSlop's work continued to spread throughout Twitter and even onto Qanon forums, according to the Verge, where some followers wonder why Q doesn't have "better intel than to fall for this?" Good q.

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Comments 2 total

MCC1701

Jun 05, 2020 at 02:29PM EDT

This is what a lot of people constantly fail to understand. You have people on side A, people on side B, people who don't want to get involved, and people who want to get involved just to "watch the world burn." On top of that, you have lots of variations, middle positions, passive leanings, etc. Our desire to turn everything into us vs them and pull everyone in is going to be the death of us…

2

oudaveguy98

Jun 05, 2020 at 01:53PM EDT

A key contributor to the problem is that these propaganda networks routinely act so unprofessionally, and have so little credibility, we actually expect this kind of behavior from them.

3

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