While we always caution everyone to question just about everything you read online (with the exception of this wonderful website), the unfortunate reality is that some will undoubtedly clamor at even the most ridiculous of social media postings. Add in a half-decent Photoshop job and before you know it, the rumor mill is spinning.
Last month we covered a satirical account on Facebook that was posting outlandish sh*t that people were actually buying into, even with the warnings of satire spread across the page’s feed. In this more recent case in South Carolina, however, there are no warnings of satire as the goal was legitamatley to fool people into believing there was some sort of reward system in place to reward hunters based on the color of collar or band a deer was wearing.
With wildlife collaring being a valuable tool used by wildlife managers across the country, the Facebook post that was posted in a Facebook Group made a call out to South Carolina hunters stating that the “rumors were true!!” and that “banded deer will rewarded as follows” as it went into the details of a tiered cash reward system based on the diffulcty of acquiring a certain color of band ($250 for the coveted red band!).
The post eventually caught the eye of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources who did a wee bit of Photoshopping themselves to disprove the ridiculous clains of the original post.
“Photoshop is an amazing tool until it’s used to spread rumors,” the Facebook post from the DNR stated.
