'Back To The Future' Day Hoax: Do Not Be Fooled!

[NelsonG]

[img]http://moviesblog.mtv.com//wp-content/uploads/movies/2012/06/Back-Future-Hoax.jpg[/img]

Yesterday, Twitter feeds, Tumblrs, and everything in between went into a frenzy over what everyone was calling "[url="http://www.mtv.com/movies/movie/2163/moviemain.jhtml"]Back to the Future[/url]" Day. The idea was that yesterday, June 27, 2012, was the date Marty McFly traveled to in "Back to the Future Part 2." There was even a widely shared screenshot to prove it. People cheered that we as a society had finally made it to the future, and everyone eagerly awaited the release of "Jaws 19" and the Cubs' World Series win.

But anyone with more than a cursory recall of that classic film knew immediately that the internet—believe it or not—was very, very wrong.

The true "Back to the Future" Day is still three years away: October, 21, 2015. The hoax was so widespread, however, that it called for some investigation into where the internet went wrong.



The bright muckrakers over at [url="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/06/27/_back_to_the_future_future_day_hoax_today_not_the_date_shown_on_doc_s_delorean.html"][i]Slate[/i][/url] pieced together the mystery, discovering that there was a very simple, yet very stupid explanation for the hoax.

Yesterday was the second false "Back to the Future" Day. The first one occurred back in 2010, when [url="http://www.totalfilm.com/news/back-to-the-future-hoax-we-confess"]Total Film[/url] posted a doctored photo of the DeLorean's dashboard as a joke.

This latest fake came from the Facebook page of a mobile app called [url="http://www.facebook.com/simplytap"]Simply Tap[/url]. The image was Photoshopped to promote a sale on the trilogy's Blu-ray collection. From there, the picture leaked out into the mainstream, and people everywhere shared it without any context or an eye for fact checking.

Moral of the story: We still have three years to get the whole hoverboard thing right and make 15 "Jaws" sequels.

[i]Did you fall for the "Back to the Future" Day hoax? Let us know in the comments below and on [url="http://www.twitter.com/mtvmoviesblog"]Twitter[/url]![/i]



[url=http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/06/28/back-to-the-future-day-hoax/]View the full article[/url]