Have you seen a viral video that features a car slamming through a storefront, hitting a woman? The hood of the car appears to read “It’s a boy,” which has led some on social media to make jokes about the extremes some people will go to for their gender reveal parties. But the video is actually altered.
“Gender reveals are getting crazy,” one X account tweeted on Wednesday, sharing a video that’s been seen over 4.3 million times.
The account is called “non aesthetic things” and shares viral videos, some of which simply aren’t what they appear to be. However, the account has a blue “verification” check mark, which sometimes leads people to believe the account can be relied upon for accuracy. In this case, it doesn’t mean anything. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter, now known as X, anyone with $8 to spend can buy a checkmark, completely negating the original purpose of the verification program.
The original video, which was first published in 2014 by the NBC TV affiliate in New York, clearly shows the car didn’t have “It’s a boy” written on the hood, as you can see in the screenshot I’ve taken below.
The accident occurred on January 8, 2014, according to Channel 4 in New York and happened when a 71-year-old driver accidentally slammed their car into a Rite-Aid storefront in New Jersey. The accident was unintentional and it’s not clear why the elderly driver mistakenly slammed into the front of the store.
An 18-year-old woman was hit by the car at the scene but reportedly refused medical treatment. You can see the car strike her unexpectedly as she was trying to exit the store.
It’s not clear who first altered the video to make it appear like the car has “it’s a boy” written on the hood. It’s also not clear if the “non aesthetic things” account knows the video is fake.
X has a crowd-sourced fact-checking program called Community Notes, where average X users can submit corrections or clarifications about posts on the platform. But as of this writing there is nothing from Community Notes to point out the video is altered. And with the video racking up over 4 million views and counting, plenty of people have already seen the fake video before it hopefully gets fact-checked on the website.
