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Someone Started A Rumour That Hurricane Florence Contained Sharks And People Believed It

Someone Started A Rumour That Hurricane Florence Contained Sharks And People Believed It

'You might end up with a shark in your front yard,' claimed Rush Limbaugh in all earnestness

Mike Wood

Mike Wood

One of the weirdest elements of the onset of Hurricane Florence has been the huge variety of weird rumours that have flown around in the lead-up to the landfall.

Because that's what you want when you're being battered by extreme weather conditions with grim real-life consequences, isn't it? Some knobhead making up some unfunny shit about it.

So I don't know what's worse here - the fact that someone decided to take the piss out of the severity of the situation by suggesting the hurricane was basically a 'sharknado', or the fact that people believed it.

A scene from Sharknado. Spoiler: not happening in the US right now.
Syfy

Fake news, obviously. But somehow it caught the ear of US radio show host and full-time conservative Rush Limbaugh, and it doesn't sound like he spotted the fakery. Well, it was pretty subtle, I suppose. Thank fuck Snopes is on hand or we might all have been taken in.

"New reports from NOAA aircraft show sharks have been lifted into the hurricane," said the veteran broadcaster on Tuesday.

"So those of you in the target path in North Carolina, South Carolina: in addition to the pig manure, in addition to the slop, in addition to the floods, in addition to the cars rolling around on the waters in front of your house, in addition to the mudslides and the landslides, now you might end up with a shark in your front yard."

*slow clap*

Rush Limbaugh.
PA

Limbaugh went on to show an image ostensibly taken from a TV news report, which was subsequently found to have been created on 'breaking news' headline generator breakyourownnews.com - well done, everybody.

Other whoppers included the suggestion that people should put their valuables into the dishwasher to stop them getting destroyed.

A meme that got thousands of shares read: "Anything that you want to try and preserve, but you can't take with you - place it in a plastic bin and put in your dishwasher, lock the door - this should make it water tight in case of any water intrusion into your home."

Plenty of proper news outlets ran with this nonsense, with the Tampa Bay Times going as far as contacting a dishwasher repair company to confirm that, no, it doesn't work. Because dishwashers are designed to stop water getting out, not in, because obviously they are.

Finally, the old theory that you can just fire guns at a problem until it stops reared its ugly head. (Spoiler: theory is rarely applicable, and certainly not here).

There is now a joke event on Facebook - with 100,000 attendees - saying that they should meet on the shoreline and fire their guns at the storm, a clear satire which was amazingly (or not, actually) taken seriously by some users.

"I'm sure there are disturbed individuals who could believe that shooting at a large cloud could effect it, but the very vast majority of 'participants' know that it's just an excuse to make memes and laugh about the absurdity of it all," said Ryan Stumpf, who began the event.

So yeah, hurricane hoaxes - this is where we're at now. How very 2018.

Featured Image Credit: PA / SyFy

Topics: US News