the top comment says: “This is so bad I’m starting to wonder if this was made up just for this sub.”
@waltzingbears, who also believes the post might be fake, notes: “the screenshot shows it being reblogged by another user but the tags on the post look more like tags you’d add on an original post, not a reblog”
in response to
@waltzingbears observation, an anon sent me a message, suggesting that the weird tags could be explained by a “popular plugin called Missing E” which “automatically added the tags of the person you were reblogging from (in this case, perhaps the original post) to your own reblog.”
to further our investigation, @swordcats contacted the reddit user who posted the thread. the user responded, saying they believe they “found it on 4chan”, adding that it was “probably fake”
if anyone has more information that could help the investigation, please let me know
as @hvadfucken discovered, nothing shows up when you try to google specific phrases out of the post (with the site:tumblr.com modifier). all that shows up are: “people quoting or parodying the supposed OP
“.
looking up the ‘fedorable’ tag doesn’t bring up anything, but google trends reveals that the term had an uptick around the time the screenshot was taken
@techno-poet had a look at the EXIF data from the original imgur file, and was able to determine the file was created in adobe photoshop CC; however, as techno-poet points out, this doesn’t really prove the image was fake, since many people use photoshop to crop/edit screenshots etc
we tried carbon dating the post by the shade of blue in the screenshot. from my own archive i found a matching shade of blue from 16th of july, 2012, and @techno-poet found a screenshot they had saved from march 16th, 2014 (only 15 days after the oppa homeless screenshot was uploaded to imgur)
as @techno-poet points out: “that faint background coloring was typical of chat posts at the time”, adding “Why would any common troll go to the trouble of adding a barely-visible background stripe? If it was a screenshot of another post that was edited to have these words, isn’t it likely that the background wouldn’t match up with the words?”
based on this new evidence, it’s very unlikely that the screenshot was completely fabricated (i.e. created in photoshop).
that leaves us with a few possibilities:
1) the post is real, we just haven’t found it yet
2) the post is real, but every person who has ever reblogged it has since deactivated (very unlikely with 150 notes)
3) the person who created the screenshot posted oppa homeless style to tumblr, then edited in the notes to make the post appear more believable
4) since the screenshot predates john green’s cock sucking monologue (i.e. our post editing privileges had yet to be revoked), it’s possible that the person who created the screenshot made it by editing an already existing chat post that had 150 notes
concluding remarks: if the post is actually real, the only way we’re going to find it is if someone discovers it in their archives.
if anyone think they might have reblogged it at some point, look through your blogs archive (sort by post type -> chat post).
i think it’s most likely that you’d find it around the time the screenshot was posted to imgur (1st of march, 2014), but it’s also possible that the post was created closer to the release of oppa gangnam style (15th July 2012)
