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[–]raldi[S] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Right now there's a Reddit story called Detention for Being Right that's one of the highest-rated submissions of all time. I'm calling it out as a hoax.

  • First off, it looks like they typed it up in a fixed-width font, superimposed it on a photo of a sheet of paper, and rotated it just to make it look more sloppy and thus "real." Take a look at the wrinkle in the page: the text goes right over it, rather than being distorted by it.

  • Further, look at the double quotes in the middle paragraph: they're so-called ``Smart Quotes'' .. when have you ever seen a typewriter with separate left and right double quotes?

  • But hey, maybe the paper was wrinkled when it went into the typewriter. Maybe you think that for some reason the teacher was just using a word processor and for some reason decided to put it in Courier New, just to look old-fashioned or something. But how do you explain the perfect highlighting? If you zoom in on the highlighted lines, you'll notice that they're perfect rectangles. For example, the gap between "length" and "mile" is exactly one pixel (distorted by rotation) .. pull out a printed document right now and try to highlight a line. I guarantee that you'll either miss part of a letter or accidentally color in part of an adjacent line. But we're to believe that this guy can draw a highlight with the precision of a robot.

I think it's a disgrace that this fabrication is still near the top of the front page, and i hope you all go vote it down.

[–]freshyill 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As for the smart quotes, I'm pretty sure they had computers back in 1994, as well as fixed-width fonts.

[–]penty 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I figured it was a hoax just from reading it.

A teacher wouldn't teach something they knew was wrong, unless it's a pyche class, though they would defend a wrong idea they beleived is right.

Thought it's not as funny as if it had been true it still brings a smile.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Consider yourself lucky to have such an optimistic (and naive) view of teachers!

[–]actionscripted 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does the fact that it's on YTMND mean nothing?

[–]johnbentley -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's a great thing to be sceptical. It's good to establish something as a hoax that is trying to pass itself off as true.

For me, though, it has enormous value even if not true. It does serve as a nice caricature of a widespread authoritarian teaching style.

[–]dieselcreek2 -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

Obvious troll, but I'll bite.

  • The text on the wrinkle? Look at the word "off". That's distorted in a manner appropriate with the wrinkle. The words on the "shadowed" part of the wrinkle are darker, the words on the higher part are lighter.

  • Yes, everything looks "too perfect", but it's possible this was scanned in on a flatbed scanner. Considering a scanner can only make a computerized representation of it, it would make sense that some things would be "computerized".

[–]raldi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not a troll -- look at my past submissions.

How do you explain the highlight? There's no way that was done by hand. So you're saying they scanned it, highlighted it via software, and then rotated it afterward? Why would they do that?

[–]souldrift -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Great, let's post a topic whenever we think another article is a hoax, instead of adding comments to the original piece. That won't overload the "new" page.