From wailing mermaids to vaccinated zombies: Fake news that tickled your fancy in 2021 – India Today

Woke, sharp and alert on the eve of 2022? Well, think again; look behind the landmines of misinformation that you tip-toed over in the year gone by.

It's quite likely that in 2021, you too might have tripped over a fake, at least once, even if inadvertently.

Did you hear about a bride paragliding into the wrong wedding venue who ended up marrying a different person? Or a beau gifting his lover a piece of jewellery made from his own teeth?

From a creepy creature landing at Bihar's Darbhanga to spotting a wailing mermaid at the Mangalore beach, 2021 has had its share of strange and bizarre misinformation that managed to bluff people.

ALSO READ | Dial M for Muslim, Jamtara boys and other hot trends in fact checking during 2021

Like the many variants of Covid-19, misinformation also came in different shapes and colours.

Here are some Alpha, Delta and Omicrons of fake news we came face to face in 2021. Equally contagious. While some left you amused or perplexed, others were downright disgusting.

Who were the most fact-checked personalities of 2021 in India?

We tried to find the answer by using "Google Fact Check explorer" -- a repository of fact check articles by various fact-checking organisations, a kind of ready reckoner.

This helped us identify the top five personalities whose posts triggered the maximum number of fac?t check articles. These were the people who came under the scanners of fact-checkers multiple times.

BJP leaders Sambit Patra, Amit Malviya and Priti Gandhi, Pakistan-born Canadian columnist Tarek Fatah, and editor-in-chief of Sudarshan News, Suresh Chavhanke topped the list.

Netizens almost believed a weird story on social media about a "creepy creature" falling from the sky in Bihar's Darbhanga during cyclone Yaas. The story got thousands of shares before it was debunked. Huh, it turned out to be a silicon toy created by an Italian artist.

On a wing and a prayer, literally? This video of a man lying on the turbine engine of an aircraft made people skip a heartbeat. More so, because this came at a time when visuals of people desperately trying to flee Afghanistan were all over the internet.

It was an amazing digital creation by a Vietnamese graphic designer.

The wailing Mermaid on the seashore of Mangalore was in fact an awareness video on sea conservation, shot in Sri Lanka.

Marriages are made in heaven. But a paragliding trip for a destination wedding could land a bride with the wrong husband ?

Sounds funny. But several mainstream media outlets tripped over this bizarre story of a bride in Gwalior paragliding into a wrong wedding venue and marrying a different person. This was a fictitious story published on a satire website.

Did Covid concerns force Olympic organisers to make "anti-sex beds" for athletes?

No, these beds were designed before the pandemic and could bear more than 400 pounds weight -- enough for most, if not, couples. Even if the news is fake, nothing sells like sex. So, many chose to jump over to this ludicrous bed.

A Muslim BTS fan accidentally plays the song "Dynamite" instead of the azaan on loudspeakers at 4 am and gets arrested in Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur. While this could make for a crazy fan story, this too was fictitious.

We take great pride in the fact that Sanskrit is a scientific and mathematically compatible language.

But someone decided to take us for a ride in a satire piece claiming that an IIT gold medallist has created an Indian messaging app using Sanskrit coding.

Stoking our fear for the deadly virus, a satire article claimed that CNN has praised Taliban fighters for using masks.

Another said the US is detaining non-vaccinated people in camps.

Many gulped them all, with our eyes wide shut.

Stories that were so disgusting that you felt like puking.

The story of a street food vendor in Guwahati who mixed urine in food was already unpalatable. A further twist to give it a communal spin made it even more sickening.

If you've read the famous story "The gift of the Magi", you know that true love knows no boundaries. But which girl in the world would want jewellery made out of her lover's teeth as a gift?

Convincing anti-vaxxers to get a shot in the arm is challenging enough. But these guys floated the idea of Covid vaccine shots in the penis and still found some takers.

If you've any doubt that the infodemic of misinformation could be as contagious as the Covid-19, just look at the rubbish some people choose to believe.

The video of Covid vaccines turning people into magnets might have started as a prank. But soon it was spreading all over the internet and in the WhatsApp groups.

The story of vaccines turning people into zombies and cannibals looks like a shot straight out of a zombie film. But the fact-checkers discovered to their horror that there is no dearth of conspiracy theories and zombie fans.

We don't mind when onions make us teary eyed. But won't you panic if someone tells you that that dreaded black fungus, mucormycosis, is sitting right under the onion peels?

By now, you already know that there were no creeps falling from the sky in Darbhanga, that you've not turned into a magnet after taking the shot of vaccine and that the black fungus in the onions are rather harmless.

But the zombies of misinformation are unlikely to go away. Like the Omicron variant, they might just change their tentacles in the new year.

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From wailing mermaids to vaccinated zombies: Fake news that tickled your fancy in 2021 - India Today