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No, elderly couple didn’t burn down house after flamethrower sex game

An image with the text “Elderly couple accidentally burns house down during sex game involving WW2 flamethrower” has been circulating on Facebook in South Africa.

It’s a screenshot of an article on World News Daily Report, a website known for its fictional joke news – a form of satire.

“A couple’s sexual game turned horribly wrong this morning, as they accidentally burned their house to the ground with a 75-year old flamethrower,” the article reads.

“Nancy Brown, the 911 operator who answered the call from 96-year old Maurice Fogerty, says she first thought she was dealing with pranksters when he told her he had ‘torched the house with napalm while having sex with his wife’.”

The number 911 is for emergency calls in the USA.

The story has two photos. One shows firefighters hosing down a burning house. The other, of a woman in an open plan office, is captioned “911 operator Nancy Brown”.



Unrelated photos


But both photos are unrelated to the story. A reverse image search reveals that the photo of the burning house is a screenshot from a stock video available on Shutterstock.

The photo of the woman does show a real 911 operator. But she’s Susan Gentry – not “Nancy Brown” – who works at the emergency response centre in Oklahoma City in the US state of Oklahoma. 

The photo was lifted from a gallery published on the website of the Oklahoman newspaper.

‘Where facts don't matter’


World News Daily Report doesn’t pretend that the made-up stories it publishes are true.

“World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content,” reads a disclaimer at the bottom of every page of the website.

“All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.”

The site recently added the slogan “Where facts don't matter” beneath its logo, to make it more clear that it doesn’t publish real news, or even fake or false news. Its stories are all fiction. – Dancan Bwire




 

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