Popular viral "tornado" video and lightning strike were part of a social experiment.

[Michael Gavan]

The Aussie who intercepted a dust devil on foot, and the lightning strike near the woman on the beach (as predicted by Dan Robinson) were part of a 2 - year social experiment by an Australian company.

http://www.thewoolshedcompany.com/virals.html

 

[Marc R. O'Leary]

One hell of a marketing campaign.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Clearly, having experience and being experts in the field, we could tell the dust devil footage and the lightning footage were faked, but damn, the rest of those clips looked quite convincing. Those people did better than Hollywood film editors in making unreal stuff look real. They ought to be the ones making bank.

 

[Stan Rose]

video editing is so easy and powerful these days, I don't trust any of these videos.

 

[joel ewing]

I can tell you this...I am SO SICK of seeing that twisted-Aussie's wrinkly face all the time. ENOUGH....man.

 

[Dan Robinson]

These are getting increasingly common to the point that one needs to question *every* viral video, and the shooter should be prepared to provide more proof if necessary. Here's yet another.

 

[Dan Robinson]

And we have yet another fake duping the masses, this time of lightning in New York City.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/4ulqap/new_york_city_just_witnessed_an_absolutely/

Lack of reflections in the water, unrealistically thin lightning channels without fringing "glow", both foreground and background channels are sharp despite the background being soft, and the photographer has a history of photo merging (not stacking, but taking completely separate scenes and bringing them together).

Stuff like this makes me wonder if I should just Photoshop everything I want to capture and do away with all of the years of traveling, sleepless nights standing in the rain, the agony of missed strikes only to pick myself up and keep going after "the shot" for years not knowing if I'll ever succeed.

Sadly, most just don't care, as evidenced by the comments in that thread. As long as they're entertained, anything goes. With reality TV so popular, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[StephenHenry]

Sadly, most just don't care, as evidenced by the comments in that thread.

Haha the amount of comments on the post saying there shouldn't be a reflection in the water due to it being a long exposure... Almost made me guilty of this...