Hallucinatory Deaths on Tiktok
image: dall-e 2 result for prompt "mirror incident, TikTok, hunter schaffner and holden goyette, shattered glass, thousands of tiny pieces, vaporwave 2023"
so, there's a celebrity named Hunter Schafer. to avoid turning this thread into a political debate - and because it's not relevant to the topic anyway - I won't go into any further detail except to say that Schafer is very popular among zoomers. so it's kind of odd that when you type "hunter sch..." into google, 3 of the top results involve "hunter schaffner", which is either a very unlikely misspelling or a random person that no one has ever heard of. and who is "holden goyette"? and what's all this about a "mirror video"?
searching for "hunter schaffner and holden goyette" gives even more interesting suggestions:
so what exactly happened with Hunter Schaffner, or Schafer, and their friend Holden Goyette, and a mirror? the results of google searches are not enlightening. at the time of writing, the first result for the query "hunter schaffner and holden goyette mirror" is a youtube video from the channel "Redaksi News" titled "Hunter Schaffner Mirror Video | Hunter Cchaffner and Holden Goyette". the video's description reads:
Hunter Schaffner Mirror Video | Hunter Cchaffner and Holden Goyette has emerged as an exciting beauty disruptor who imbues her red carpet appearances with a particularly intellectual, avant-garde aesthetic since her debut performance on HBO's blockbuster adolescent drama Euphoria. Vanity Fair's Oscars 2022 after-party last night was no exception. Schafer, who attended the event with boyfriend Dominic Fike, donned a slinky, structured gown fashioned from faded denim with a directional graphic eye and sleek drench lengths to match.
#hunterschaffnermirror #newsupdate #redaksinews
TAG
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the three-minute video consists of a text-to-speech voice reading an article about Hunter Schafer's makeup and outfits while a slideshow of photos of Schafer plays. it is very tedious. there is no mention of a "mirror incident" or "Holden Goyette". the next search result is the video "hunter glass incident video || hunter schaffner mirror video viral" by "Billu Fff".
this one is more interesting. the thumbnail is a blurry photo of what appears to be several people carrying large mirrors. the video opens with a clip of someone driving a run-down truck or bus in a third world country. near the start of the clip, a car passes uncomfortably close to them. later, they loudly honk a few times. it looks like the start of a liveleak video - you expect a crash, you expect blood and gore. but nothing happens. the video is 47 seconds long.
next is "hunter glass incident video – hunter schaffner mirror video trending - the mirror case holden and" by Rizwan Explorer. its thumbnail is a rather disturbing close-up of a small child's face with a scared expression. while selfies of hunter schafer appear on the screen, a monotone voice with a heavy Indian accent explains that "today in this wideo i share hunter glass incident wideo, hunter schaffner mirror wideo while i share in this wideo full detail wideo about hunter glass incident wideo, please subscribe my channel for full detail update". it goes on a bit longer but it's just more of this indian man reading random search terms, including something about Bella Poarch (another zoomer celebrity). simply searching for "hunter schaffner" on youtube turns up more of these strange videos, as well as ones that appear unrelated aside from purportedly involving violence and gore.
needless to say, none of these videos contain any information about the supposed mirror incident. if you scroll further down into the google results, you'll find cryptic social media posts as well as news articles on unfamiliar sites like "Fashionuer" and "Sureloaded". "Aymen Gul" of "Fashionuer" writes in "Hunter Schaffner Mirror Incident Video Went Viral On the Internet":
Due to the incident involving the mirror used by Hunter Schaffner and also Holden Goyette, mass transit may be the last holdout for American mask laws.
Covers should start to disappear from airplanes, airline companies, and numerous other public transit systems in approximately a fortnight. If American Airlines had been interested initially, it might have happened in the first place. If American Airlines had been interested initially, it might have happened in the first place.
Airways, including United, American, US, and Southwestern, have requested a halt to conceal public transit restrictions that were formerly test processes for foreign visitors to the USA, together with shipping companies and the U.S. aviation business organization.
it continues on with a bunch of weirdly phrased blabber about covid and masks. another article on ghsplash.com reads:
Death and obituary of Hunter Schaffner; the Mirror Incident
Mask regulations in the United States are quickly approaching what could be their final frontier: the transportation sector.
Delta, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, as well as cargo companies and the U.S. Airline Association, have all made public pleas for the elimination of mask regulations on public transportation and mandatory pre-trip screening for foreign visitors to the United States.
In a recent open letter to the White House, they argued that "it's time to dismantle transportation policy in the age of the coronavirus."
needless to say, these articles are clearly AI-generated. the only article that actually seems to be about the incident is in vietnamese. it purports to offer censored screenshots of the video and explains its contents:
(via Google Translate)
Recently on Titok, there was a story about Hunter Schaffner Mirror Video School that sounds quite scary and has been spread to the east of our country, but how true this story about Hunter Schaffner Mirror is still a mystery. hidden number . So for details, let's refer to beefdaily.com.vn to see if it's as creepy as the music we've seen!
This Hunter Schaffner Mirror Video is heartbreaking. Around April 2022, two boys (hunter schaffner) and (holden goyette) decided to take the mirror out of that school's bathroom. Holden was filming the whole incident when the hunter schaffner decided to put it in the bathroom drawer, as holden watched as the hunter schaffner dropped the mirror so hard that it shattered and shot small pieces of glass through the hunter's body schaffner, completely cut the hunter schaffner into tiny pieces. No arrests have been made but holden is charged with trespassing property. All information about Hunter Schaffner Mirror video will be updated in detail here.
despite this, no one on social media seems to have been able to locate the video.
the real story behind the mirror incident isn't particularly sensational. Holden Goyette is a teenage actor and Hunter Schaffner is his friend. holden posts on tiktok as @holdne, where he uploaded a video titled "rip hunter" and tagged it with "#mirrorboy #themirrorincedent ##mirror #hunterschaffner #holdengoyette #fartnooga". the video shows pictures of hunter in various situations set to bad pop music, including the same shot of him holding a mirror that appears in the vietnamese article. it's clear from the context and presentation of the video that it's meant to be a joke. it's just two high schoolers making a stupid video for laughs.
the video was widely shared on tiktok, perhaps because of the aforementioned confusion between "Hunter Schaffner" and "Hunter Schafer". gullible teens started searching for information about Hunter Schaffner and Holden Goyette on google and youtube. and somehow, people found out that this was a juicy search term, and started churning out reams of low-effort content to get views and ad revenue. at least, we assume they're people. the articles about the supposed incident were clearly written by a generative text model. the youtube videos are so nonsensical that it's hard to believe they were conceived by a human mind. was a person involved in this process at all? or was the gruesome Mirror Incident purely a hallucination of an artificial intelligence programmed to maximize clicks at all costs?
dall-e 2 result for prompt: "hunter schaffner and holden goyette, mirror incident, dangerous tiktok prank, glass shards, red liquid, surreal dreamlike painting, soft lighting, nostalgic"
this isn't the first time this has happened. in october 2022 strange articles and videos about the death of "Katlyn Lyon" started to appear all over the internet.
an article on "latestnews.fresherslive.com" offers the following helpful information:
1. What Happened To Kaitlyn Lyon?
Kaitlyn Lyon died recently
2. Is Katlyn Elizabeth Lyon Dead?
Yes, sources have reported that Katlyn Elizabeth Lyon is dead
3. What is Kaitlyn Elizabeth Lyon Cause Of Death?
Kaitlyn Elizabeth Lyon Cause Of Death is yet to be revealed
vizaca.com goes into more detail:
Katlyn Elizabeth Lyon was born in 1981 in Virginia. She was a former softball player treed faculty placed in Escanaba. On February 2022, she signed a contract with Kingsley Athletics as a senior player.
She had started to earn many achievements in her early career. But, it was until she was diagnosed with rare cardiopathy. Due to her medical condition, she would often get hospitalized for having open operations.
On the eighth Gregorian calendar month of 2022, it was Thursday when her condition worsened, and she died due to cardiopathy. She was 28 when she died.
despite the weird grammar, the story sounds believable. the article is accompanied by a video, which is much more normal and professional looking than the Hunter Schaffner videos.
other articles such as this one from "dailynationpakistan" corroborate the story of Lyon's death from heart disease.
Cardiopathy was affecting Katlyn. an uncommon congenital heart condition that has undergone research.
In February, Lyon spoke on Congenital Heart Defect Awareness, noting the prevalence of various heart conditions around the world.
She emphasised that although those illnesses look terrible, they are treatable and not life-threatening. However, it only caused friction among some people as a result of this comment.
Her condition deteriorated throughout the battle, and occasionally she was transported right away to the hospital. Despite receiving the greatest medical attention possible, she passed away at the age of 28 because her health couldn't stabilise.
the only problem is that none of this is true. Katlyn Lyon (her real name was Katlyn Lyon Montgomery) did not play softball and she didn't have a heart condition. she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend after breaking up with him. according to a real news site that is not written by bots:
Upon arrival, Deputies located Katlyn Montgomery unresponsive with agonal breathing on the floor. She was rapidly transported to Centra Lynchburg General Hospital where physicians noted linear markings consistent with being strangled on her neck and throat. They also observed petechial hemorrhaging on her face and eyes. Hospital personnel contacted the Sheriff's Office and updated them on their findings. Investigators executed a search warrant on the residence [where Montgomery was found] and located phone charging cords wrapped up in a blanket on the bed. Law enforcement assessed the cords appeared to be the same size as the linear markings found on the victim's neck.
Search warrants for the defendant's Ford Explorer show that BCSO deputies began their investigation the same day Montgomery was found in her apartment. From the SUV, deputies say they recovered several receipts, a purple hair brush, black glasses, a car charger with two chords, three pairs of black pants, and two black shirts.
as with hunter schaffner, the story began on tiktok. @tinajamersonhopkins, a relative of Katlyn Montgomery, posted a cryptic video about her death that got over 6 million views. when people began searching for news coverage, which wasn't available at the time, bots rose up to fill the void with articles and videos about a death that never happened to a woman who never existed.
dall-e 2 result for prompt "mirror incident, hunter schaffner and holden goyette, shattered glass, reflection, 1990s polaroid photo, nostalgic, chillwave"
if you poke around the sites that post these AI generated articles, you'll find more examples of hallucinatory deaths.
the bots know what makes us click. we want to know who died, and when, and how. if you search for death on "fashionuer", one of the sites mentioned earlier, you will find 47 pages of results. some involve celebrities, but some seem to be for ordinary people, such as this one for Kathleen Ellen Pekrul Mullen:
She was born on August 15, 1956, to Muriel Hallgren Pekrul and the deceased Wilfred Peter Pekrul in Lansing, Michigan.
She grew up in Northern Michigan communities like Lansing, West Branch, Petoskey, and Indian River alongside her three younger siblings.
She constantly valued her family and the recollections of spending some time in a log cabin, going on family vacations, swimming in nearby lakes, skiing cross-country, collecting renowned morel mushrooms, and boating the Sturgeon River.
Throughout North Carolina, Kathleen was indeed a licensed, qualified engineer.
She established Pekrul Design, a PLLC that offers engineering and HVAC know-how to chicken farms around the Southeast.
On Thursday, January 19, at 3 PM, St. Mark Catholic Church will host a funeral mass that can be watched online.
unlike the Schaffner and Lyon stories, this account seems to be essentially true, but it's just a mangled version of this legacy.com obituary posted by her family. it's unclear why the bots decided to latch onto this woman's story when there is no viral tiktok video or social media buzz about her. apparently, it's not uncommon for this sort of bot activity to be directed at non-public figures. in a leddit thread about katlyn lyon, one poster shared:
if you want a picture of the future, imagine bots telling lies about human deaths, forever.
