Of the 350-plus crowd-sourced YouTube videos of the Sunrise propane explosion of last week, this one has to be the most unbelievable. And not unbelievable in that it was overly spectacular, but more just a stone-cold fake.
[rssbreak] As exposed by Alley Insider, YouTube producers Kevjumba and sxephil fabricated witnessing the mushroom cloud blast for the purposes of a YouTube episode on their respective channels. They spliced authentic footage of last week’s explosion – from here – with a video of their awe-struck (more like dork-struck) reactions. And, as it is pointed out in the previously linked article, this was a for-profit endeavor.
In his defense, Kevjumba posted the following:
…the video was not meant to trick you into thinking we recorded this as the gas tank exploded, the purpose was to create a Cloverfield-style video from two viewpoints..
As could be expected, no one’s left a “Thanks for that Cloverfield-style video, Kevjumba!” comment on the either site. Kevjumba’s since added condolences on the video page for those killed in the Sunrise incident, but not before Gawker picked up the scent:
“They probably didn’t mean to trick anyone, but it created a skewed version of reality that was watched hundreds of thousands of times. They’re YouTube partners and stand to profit off their creations.”
