5

Japanese Twitter Was Consumed By A Conspiracy Theory About A Plastic Duck

Conspiracy theories concerning doctored footage are as old as the sound stage they filmed the moon landing on. And now, because of the internet, people are more eager than ever to call everything "fake news." So it shouldn't come as a surprise that this led to the moment when the internet launched the equivalent of the Warren Commission for a Tweet about a toy that was out in the sun too long.

Over the summer, Japan suffered a major heatwave, which led to the tragic demise of one Mr. Plastic Duck. If the photos provided by its owner, @shiohitoshi, are to be believed, the duck was reduced to a puddle of googly-eyed, lime-flavored jetsam in a matter of hours.

shiohitoshi/TwitterThe perfect representation of 2017, quite frankly.

4

Stock Image Stories Are The World's Newest, Best Art Form

What started out as an innocent exercise in helping people illustrate stories or sell products have metastasized into a bizarre art project aimed at capturing every single possible combination of human behavior with any actors and props at hand. And sometimes, that leads to series of stock photos telling some dark and disturbing tales.

Take this one, for instance. It starts off with a muscular pool boy proposing to what seems to be a wheelchair-bound widow. It's lovely, right? It ends with her drowning in a pool.

Rob Dobi/TwitterAnother set is him peeing in the pool five minutes earlier.

3

A Computer Wrote Episodes Of Seinfeld

It's fair to say that computers are getting smarter with every passing day. Case in point: Many autocorrects now seem to they know what we'll say in any given conversation, give or take an accidentally insane bit of rambling. So in an effort to see whether the machines could match the musings of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, a group of comedy writers fed Seinfeld scripts into several predictive text keyboards (one for each of the main characters, along with one for stage directions) and let 'er rip. Surprisingly, the result was a pretty faithful reproduction of Seinfeld, albeit written by someone in the grip of a crippling mescaline and tequila addiction.

Jamie Brew/Twitter

Jamie Brew/Twitter

Jamie Brew/Twitter

Jamie Brew/Twitter

2

The Babadook Became An Accidental LGBTQ Icon

For many, 2017 was a dark, scary time in their lives. The world once again seemed like it is filled with hate and small-mindedness, as we saw many of the monsters of old creep back into our view. So what better way than to fight the darkness than by taking two of the scariest movie monster ever to slither on our screens and make them positive, loving role models of the LBGTQ community?

In 2014, the world was introduced to the horror of the Babadook, a vicious monster that lives for attention, killing, and psychologically scarring anyone who refuses to believe in him. After noticing that Netflix had accidentally placed the film in its "LGBT Movies" category, the type 2 free thinkers of Tumblr ironically rehabilitated him as a figurehead for the LGBTQ community, complete with his own catchphrase.

Sam Stryker‏/Twitter

1

A Page From Hillary Clinton's Book Sent Twitter Spiraling

One of the major criticisms of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election was that she was just wasn't relatable enough. America simply wasn't ready for the first president who wouldn't be able to pass the Voight-Kampff Test.

PBSPersonally, we blame the uncanny valley.

Being rejected on a perceived lack of humanity must be very painful (unless you're a robot, naturally), and was an important element of Clinton's introspective memoir What Happened, a scintillating postmortem of a failed election in which the culprit was identified as every other human being to have ever existed except herself. The book also details many of the tough choices Clinton had to make throughout the campaign, doing things she often considered pandering just to get more votes. For instance, take that time she was campaigning in Oklahoma, a deep red state. In a desperate attempt to appeal to local voters, Clinton remembers sacrificing a bit of dignity by dressing up as a cowboy, firing two revolvers into the air, and, as we all remember, executing a cattle rustler right there on the stage.

Pixelated Boat/Twitter

Pixelated Boat/Twitter

It's that this point we should clarify that this didn't happen. The above page was nothing but a bit of surrealist madness from "Milkshake Duck"-termer and Very Funny Twitter Account @pixelatedboat. But you were convinced for a second, weren't you? Admit it.

Barely a day later, Twitter was being flooded with "Is this real?" replies which Boat posted, probably while pinching the bridge of his nose for several seconds. Certainly, the dumber parts of the internet were more than willing to believe Clinton had added another innocent life to her quite impressive body count.

Adam is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter about depressing history which you should definitely, definitely subscribe to.

What is the internet good for if not making scary things less scary? Like with Pennywise plush dolls, for example.

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