Kevin Phelan
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Tee Ngin Rui
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Ever read a news story so ridiculous that you'd scoff if you saw the events happen in a movie? A story that is so full of irony that it makes you think the Universe could really use a script doctor? As we've pointed out before, these types of stories do exist, and there are plenty more where they came from. Like how ...
Close your eyes and conjure up whatever you imagine when you hear the word "hipster." Are you seeing what we're seeing? Someone with a plaid shirt, skinny jeans, scruffy beard, thick-framed glasses, and an inexplicable beanie in 90-degree weather? It's like a uniform they're awarded after completing Exasperated Sigh University with a master's in Ironic Boredom.
Researchers at MIT noticed that too, and because scientific publishing has become a depressing game of whose study has the most eye-catching headline, MIT Technology Review published a study titled "The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same." Shortly after publication, one such hipster came across the piece and spat his charcoal latte and avocado toast all over his computer screen when he saw that the picture accompanying the article wasn't just any random hipster; it was him. Incensed, he contacted the publication's editor-in-chief, Gideon Lichfield, demanding to know why his photo was used without his consent and threatening to pursue legal action.
PeopleImages / Getty Images"I'm not happy about you using photos of three of my friends, either."
If this was a normal story, he'd simply learn the hard way that anyone can use anything you post on Instagram. But Lichfield was confused. He'd gotten the photo from Getty Images, a stock photo giant used by every major media outlet. Lichfield contacted Getty, which confirmed that the man in the photo was a stock model, and then the angry hipster, who confirmed that he was not. It was a different person entirely. Lichfield chronicled the whole ordeal on Twitter, marveling that "[h]ipsters look so much alike that they can't even tell themselves apart from each other." So either the study was correct, or Jordan Peele has a food-truck-themed sequel to Us in the works.
In 2003, two brothers living in Spain bought a Goya original for 270,000 euros that turned out to be merely a "some guy" original. The seller provided them with a certificate of authenticity and everything, but that too had been forged. They sued and got back the 20,000-euro deposit they had already paid. But it gave them an idea, since this was apparently the first time they'd heard of art forgery. They decided to sell the painting as a Goya original and turn a profit themselves. What a concept, right?
They found a buyer in a mysterious Italian middleman representing an even more mysterious Arab sheikh, who agreed to arrange a sale for 1.7 million Swiss Francs in exchange for a small commission of 300,000 euros. The brothers took the deal, because they'd also apparently never heard of Nigerian princes. Of course, the 1.7 million Swiss Francs were counterfeit. Not even good counterfeits; they were just photocopies. The incredibly naive brothers didn't notice, and when they tried to deposit the cash in a bank in Switzerland, they got a lesson on the concept of copy machines and were turned away.
For some reason, they hung onto the fake money when they returned to Spain via France, where they were immediately arrested at customs. Possessing 1.7 million in Monopoly money requires some serious explaining, so their whole scheme was exposed. They would have gotten away with it if it, too, if it weren't for those ... multiple totally avoidable mistakes.
Communication is key in any good workplace. Unfortunately, the Detroit Police Department doesn't seem to be one. In 2017, officers from the city's 12th precinct launched a sting operation in which cops went undercover as drug dealers to snag potential buyers off the street. Simultaneously, officers from the 11th precinct were undertaking a similar operation, except their officers posed as prospective buyers. Neither precinct knew about the other's operations. You see where this is going, yes? If you can't, let's just say the undercover officers from both groups turned out to be pretty convincing actors.
In a kerfuffle that could have easily been prevented with some simple precinct-to-precinct communication, the two sides met and both jumped into action to arrest each other. A shouting and shoving match broke out as more officers arrived on the scene, and eventually fists started flying. One officer was put in a headlock, guns were drawn, and more than two dozen cops were involved in the melee.
One officer was reportedly hospitalized following the incident, but luckily, there were no other serious injuries, besides the department's critically bruised ego. As Detroit Police Chief James Craig understated, "This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in this department." Hopefully they've since instituted some kind of inter-precinct newsletter or something.
In September 2018, San Francisco saw a huge uptick in car break-ins, with one occurring an average of every 17 minutes. To get to the bottom of this scourge, the crack reporters at Inside Edition decided to investigate the problem head-on. Maybe a little too head-on.
A news crew set up a bait car with an expensive speaker and designer purse left in plain sight, and it didn't take long for a pair of would-be thieves to fall into the trap, smashing a window and grabbing the loot. What these criminal masterminds didn't realize was that the swag was outfitted with tracking devices, and the car with cameras. It didn't take long for the investigators to track down the perps. Sounds like a huge success, right?
Well, after retrieving their property, the crew returned to the scene of the crime and interviewed a local homeowner, whose security cameras had caught the whole ordeal. It turned out that the staged robbery wasn't the only one his cameras captured. When reviewing the footage, they spotted another vehicle being broken into -- their news van. They returned to the truck to find two windows shattered and thousands of dollars' worth of equipment missing.
They really had chosen the perfect spot. They hadn't thought to trick out their own stuff with elaborate tracking technology, though, so their actual property was never recovered.
Remember McGruff the Crime Dog? His "Take a Bite Out of Crime" campaign proved surprisingly popular, despite the fact that he dressed like he was about to flash you.
Benjamin Faske/U.S.A.F.Maybe it still works for film noir, but the beige trench coat has meant "Penis incoming!" for a while now.
He was so effective, in fact, that actors still dress up as the mascot to teach kids the perils of drugs, alcohol, crime, and other objectively fun activities. One such actor was John R. Morales, who found out in 2011 exactly how effective dogs can be at sniffing out criminals.
Morales was pulled over for speeding in Galveston, Texas by an officer with a drug-sniffing dog. After the pup narced on his own kind, police searched the car, finding marijuana seedlings in the trunk and blueprints for two enormous grow facilities on the front seat. This obviously led to a search of Morales' home, and it soon became evident that the reason he wanted to keep crime off the streets was that he'd prefer to keep it all in his house. Cops found 1,000 pot plants, 9,000 rounds of ammunition, and 27 weapons, including sawed-off shotguns and a freaking grenade launcher.
Despite all the time Morales spent sweating his dangles off in the McGruff costume, the judge showed little sympathy, calling him "a scary person" and sentencing him to 16 years in prison. If there's any lesson to be learned in this, kids, it's to never trust anybody in a trench coat.
For more, check out 4 Movie Curses With Unexpected Upsides - After Hours:
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