By Nate West
News Assignment Editor
Homes were destroyed, possessions were lost and loved ones were taken from their families and friends.
Those were some of the many tragedies of Hurricane Sandy. Yet in spite of this, people felt the need to make fake pictures and get them circulating all over the internet.
On multiple social networking sites, people were sharing, retweeting or posting pictures that were edited further dramatized the storm. The people who edited the storm pictures only hurt those already suffering.
This editorial isn’t directed at people who shared pictures on Facebook or retweeted images on Twitter; there’s nothing wrong with raising awareness about the severity of a storm.
I just don’t see the need for something like this. Some people have lost everything. Hurricane Sandy is already devastating to so many people. To make fake pictures for no apparent reason other than a few laughs just adds insult to injury for so many who lost so much.
I’ll get off my soapbox and say that not all the pictures were fake. Some were real photos, but were wrongly associated with Hurricane Sandy. The most common one I saw was the photo of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, with three guards standing at attention in a downpour. The picture is actually from a rainstorm in September. Another photo of a flooded McDonalds restaurant came from a 2009 film. Another popular but fake photo showed a shark swimming in someone’s front yard. While it may be an impressive demonstration of photoshop, it’s a poor demonstration of empathy for those who were actually affected.
The faked pictures are very convincing, so it’s understandable that they were able to gain such popularity on the Internet. Images of tornado-like clouds almost touching down in New York City or an ominous sky over the Statue of Liberty and the George Washington Bridge is something a lot of people shared.
I hope people who altered photos did not do it to be cruel and get a few cold-hearted laughs out of it. I hope they did it to raise awareness of the storm and how dangerous it was. Maybe they thought seeing threatening Sandy images would make people take it more seriously and take proper precautions.
I doubt that’s the case, though. It seems to me that whoever did this wanted to see if they could get fake pictures circulating the Internet as a prank. Hopefully, their motives were well intentioned.
Even though there are more important things to worry about, people still do this sort of thing.
On a more serious note, my thoughts and prayers are with everyone who was affected by Hurricane Sandy. Many of us were fortunate. We don’t think about how truly unfortunate many others were. I hope for a speedy recovery and that everyone affected can get back to their lives with as little trouble and as little pain as possible.
