Miss Universe Flub reportedly rigged according to insider

Seasons greetings everyone!

People Liking People is coming out of retirement to report on an amusing event that has all the ingredients we look for in a story - fame, fortune, and embarrassment. And now we can add one more ingredient to the list - shenanigans. I'm sure you all have heard about what happened during the 2015 Miss Universe pageant where Steve Harvey slipped up and read that the winner was Miss Columbia, only to correct himself that Miss Colombia is actually the first runner up, and the real winner is Miss Philippines. The result was pure awkwardness as Miss Columbia stood there for a couple of minutes wearing the crown before it was taken off and placed on Miss Philippines instead. Even though the event was days ago, spectators are still bickering about how it went down, and some Colombians are still holding on to the idea that their beloved Miss Colombia retains the title. Among the chaos stands a respectful Miss Philippines, who has done all she could to remain above the fray and carry herself with dignity.

We now have a new angle to the story: An industry insider has just come out and states that the slip-up was actually staged in order to garner publicity for the franchise.



If you're going to pull something off like this, you gotta do it right. For the most part, we do think it went well enough to get the conversations stirring, but did you guys forget to pay someone? Why is this insider spilling the beans if he supposedly worked for the organization?

It certainly raises more questions than answers, but we'll definitely be staying tuned to see where this goes next. If this is staged, then who should hold the crown? Should they do it over again?

Have a happy holidays!

We're Calling BS on The Tornado Hunt 2013 Vehicles Caught in the Tornado Story

This picture along with the story that several of the vehicles manned by the "Weather Channel Tornado Hunt Team" were damaged and in one particular instance thrown 200 yards, are making the rounds lately. Everyone survived, with only minor injuries. "What we were trying to do was just get away from it and get to the south side of it. But what ended up happening was all three of our vehicles that we chase with were all hit by it," says Meteorologist Mike Bettes.

How convenient. The tornado hunt vehicles getting caught in a tornado. Is that ironic? Obvious? It seems a little too perfect for the Weather Channel, who is now trying to milk these pictures and the story for all they're worth.

So where's the video of all this from inside? Oh, there is none? You mean 3 tornado hunt vehicles are driving around and actually find themselves in the middle of a tornado, and somehow not one of them catches it on video? So far all we have is a couple pictures of a beat up vehicle prominently displaying the Tornado Hunt logo.

Take a look at this wider shot where it almost looks like someone just parked it a little off the road. There's cars driving by that appear to be having no problem, while the Tornado Hunt vehicle is all by itself with no other vehicles that had been tossed.

 

Could this turn out to have actually happened? Maybe, but for now we're calling BS. Looks like a stunt.

Update in the living room flour story: Husband Vince Napoli threatens to press charges against People Liking People. Bonus: Breastfeeding Flashmob

You may remember back in November this video that went viral for a few days:




Basically the mother, Mary Napoli, had thrown flour all over the house and then made it look like her kids had "gotten into the bag of flour and made a mess". But almost immediately speculation began that the whole thing was set up - the flour was spread just a little too evenly around the living room in places where small children would not be able to reach, and a half-second glimpse of the mother showed she was actually covered in flour herself.

We wrote a little entry about it and poked fun at the whole hoax, comparing it to the balloon boy incident. We also tried to be thorough in the information that we presented, and included Mary and her husband Vince Napoli's contact information. Evidently displaying publicly accessible phone numbers on the internet is a major crime, and People Liking People now faces being fired from the internet. We've been contacted by Vince Napoli himself who is threatening to do just that and also get his lawyers involved. See the comments below he left on our site:






Ok Vince, you have your lawyer look at it. He'll call you a fucking dumbass for wasting his time. You might as well file a lawsuit against Spokeo.com while you're at it too. OMG, an entire website dedicated to contact information? Somebody call 911!

But really, in a way we feel bad for the Napoli's. They wanted a little fame just like we all do, but instead of actually accomplishing something worthwhile they....threw flour in their living room. Come on guys, you'll have to do a little better than that.

Update: Mary Napoli is at it again. A friend of People Liking People has brought it to our attention that the mother was kicked out of the Somerset Mall in Troy, Michigan last week for get this: a "breast-feeding flash mob."



From nydailynews.com:

Mall security shut down a group of women about to launch into a breast-feeding flash mob at an upscale shopping center in Troy, Mich.

The group was led by Mary Napoli, who was confronted by a security officer when she sat down to nurse her 1-year-old son, Patch.com reported.

It always seems like the people who don't have the capacity to feel shame are the ones that need it the most. What an embarrassment this has to be for husband Vince Napoli, who's just trying to quietly hold down his job at WADL TV. We're definitely starting to see a pattern here with attention whoring activities involving their kids. It's one thing to want to stand for a cause (by the way, breastfeeding is allowed in the mall, just not protests or demonstrations) or try to become a celebrity on Youtube, but when you're shaping young lives in that environment it ends up hurting us all in the long run. We can only hope that they end up seeking the help they so desperately need.

Tribe meets white man for the first time: Bullshit

There's a video making the rounds lately showing what is claimed to be a tribe on Papua New Guinea meeting a white person for the very first time. It is so unbelievably staged and we're stunned by the number of people who actually believe it's genuine. As was the case with the blogger that was supposedly a lesbian in Syria, people seem to be so emotionally moved that they don't realize how obviously fake it is. They want to believe because it touches that special feel-good spot in their heart. Watch the video for yourself.



The comment section is filled with garbage like the following:

I could not stop crying. This is a forever lost experience. This sort of awww does not exist anymore. It will again though...when we finally meet a civilization outside our own world. WE will be the tribesman from the jungle. I think this is the best video I have ever seen on LiveLeak and I thank you for posting it.

What exactly are we lacking where a video like this fills some type of void? First of all, whether this video is real or fake, it's exploitative. It's looking at humans as if they're animals in the zoo. And that's supposed to pull at your heart strings? This idiocy mixed with the gullibility of believing this stupid video really makes us weep for humanity.

Update: William Skyvington sheds some light on the truth and origin of the video:

This charming video is in fact a fake, which has nothing to do with Papua New Guinea. The white man you see in the video is a Belgian moviemaker, Jean-Pierre Dutilleux. The "Papua New Guinea natives" were in fact members of the Toulambi tribe of indigenous Amazonian "Indians" (what a silly word for people in South America). This fake "first encounter" between the natives and a white-skinned visitor was filmed around 1999.

Chile's Miners Ask Media to Leave Them Alone

Here's an article from Bloomberg.com about the mine workers asking for some breathing room from the media after their big rescue. Understandable, of course. From our skeptical position though, these excerpts are worth noting:

The miners plan to write a book about their experience and have agreed to keep details of their ordeal among themselves for now, Illanes said. “I am party to the idea of maintaining this as a state secret,” he said.

Or... it could be that it would be disastrous for all 33 miners to start talking to the media and NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP THE SAME STORY STRAIGHT. State secret, eh?

So far, the rescued miners haven’t told the full story of the first 17 days before they were discovered alive. The men made a pact about what they will make public and what will remain private, said Illanes.

Ah yes... this "pact" we keep hearing about.

Chile Miners Rescue Skepticism Update

On October 13th we expressed skepticism in the official story of the 33 Chilean miners that were rescued after being trapped underground for 69 days. Since then we've gone back and fourth, from thinking it's a hoax to giving the story the benefit of the doubt and figuring it probably did happen as they say. There's just a couple things I want to mention now that it's been a few days:

• Conspiracy theories are starting to pop up all over the place drawing connections from the miner rescue to Masonic imagery. The # of miners (33), the date of the rescue (10 + 13 + 10= 33), the number of days it took to drill the hole (33) and the "inverted pentagram" on the miners' shirts are just some of the supposed symbols that are proof that this was all a big stunt by the Freemasons to communicate some sort of Masonic message, whatever the hell that would be. We DO NOT buy into this line of thought at all, and we think it's a bit of a distraction.
• We've read another theory that this was all staged by media companies like Timer Warner to bring in ratings. Again, we also dismiss this theory. We wouldn't be surprised if this rescue operation turned out to all be staged but we strongly doubt it was orchestrated simply to bring in ratings. It is much more likely that the motivation was Chilean politics.
  
• When reviewing all the footage that we could get our hands on, everything from the earlier days of the miners being trapped underground, the day of the rescue and interviews afterward, we can't help but feel that some of what we're seeing actually IS genuine. Some of the footage looks damn real and the raw emotion from some of the miners and their family does seem genuine. But other scenes seem more like a low budget film and come off fake as hell. It seems a bit half and half, which makes us think maybe some people were in on the hoax (if it was in fact a hoax) and others were not. Perhaps this was orchestrated at a very high level, but many of the people at the bottom were simply pawns. Also, perhaps some of the miners trapped were in on it while most of them weren't. The ones in on it kept an eye on things and made sure everything was going alright and the men weren't starving to death.
  

I'm just throwing out some of our thoughts, we're going to continue going through everything we can for more information. If you have any information or thoughts feel free to comment or send us an e-mail at peoplelikingpeople@yahoo.com.

Chilean Miners Rescue: Was it a Hoax?

The 33 Chilean Miners who were reportedly trapped underground for more than two months were rescued yesterday to cheers and a big sigh of relief for family members and everyone around the world that had been following this story. But as we here at People Liking People were watching the rescue on television, something seemed just a little too perfect about the ordeal, almost as it were made for TV.

Here is the footage of the first and second miners rescued:






We haven't really had time yet to go through all the information, the articles, the footage...etc to really make a firm case for it being a hoax. We're still up in the air on it, but something really seems off with this. First of all, you'd expect the miners to be dirty, unkempt, and extremely lethargic after being down there for 2 months with barely anything to eat. They are all clean shaven and not much of a mark on them at all. Now, we've heard from people who said "well obviously they all wanted to look good for their big day, so they sent razors down there". That could be true but...it just doesn't seem important enough to do that. 2 months without shaving honestly doesn't look that bad, so they'll look a little scruffy - big whoop.

Secondly: as you watch the video, you'll notice they keep panning back and forth from the hole in the ground to the family members as they wait in suspense for their loved one to come up. There is something about the way the boy of the first miner is behaving that just comes off as overdone acting. He seemed to be playing up just a bit too much what they know everyone wants to see - the poor family that hadn't seen their dad/husband in months, this big emotional moment where it goes from suspense to complete excitement and euphoria.

I could be wrong but you would think that immediately after a rescue like this, they would all be put on a stretcher and the first priority would be for medical personnel to take over and get them to the hospital. Eventually they did this of course, but there seemed to be quite a delay from getting out of the hole to that point, making sure that great TV moment was captured and sustained for everyone's viewing pleasure. And the miners seemed to have just too much energy for people that have been kept down there for so long without adequate food and oxygen. By the way, at least one guy is wearing sunglasses, what's up with that?

Another thing that seemed odd was the noise level - it seemed way too low. Usually with a big rescue operation like this, you have everyone trying to help and you got family members excited to see their rescued loved ones, and there's a ton of commotion. In these videos, sure there's shouting with glee, talking...etc but it seems almost like they're taking turns. A little holler from over there, a comment over here...etc but there seems to be lacking that "crowd noise" that you'd expect. And that sort of makes sense if this was staged, the people standing around wouldn't be standing around BSing as much, they'd just be playing their role and wouldn't say much unless it was in the script.

As much as we hate getting into conspiracy theories here, something just smells about this ordeal and we'll be looking through as much information as we can over the next few weeks to see if we can uncover anything. If you have any information or tips, feel free to e-mail us at peoplelikingpeople@yahoo.com