THE TIME-TRAVELLING HIPSTER: CANADIAN PHOTO CLICKBAIT

BY JOSHUA CAMERON

In 2010, an image from Bralorne Pioneer Museum’s “Their Past Lives Here” online exhibition, hosted on the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC), went viral. This photograph, showcasing an accidental museum marketing hero, drew everyone from photo historians to conspiracy theorists to the clickbait question,

Is this photo evidence of time travel?

Debates erupted online across Reddit, Digg.com, and social media. VMC website traffic rocketed well beyond previous records. Was the image manipulated? Why would it be? Was the fellow in the photo just a local fashion outcast? Above all, the biggest question the masses pondered was whether or not the image was evidence of twenty-first-century time travel.

The image, dated November 1941, shows a crowd at the reopening of the South Fork Bridge, near Gold Bridge, British Columbia. In the middle of the throng to the right is a curiously dressed “hipster” wearing what looks like a printed T-shirt, modern sunglasses, and — most interestingly —holding what looked to be a compact camera, which was, of course, almost nonexistent around this date.

Hoax-busters and experts on image manipulation immediately jumped into the conversation. Although tampering with photos in 1941 was possible, it was extremely difficult and, given the original context of the photo, this idea was ruled out.

It turns out that the man may have just been a quirky guy at the Gold Bridge opening. The sunglasses he is wearing were available as early as the 1920s, although they were not particularly fashionable at that time. The “printed T-shirt” he seems to be wearing is likely a sweater with a stitched-on logo. The decal is similar to the symbol of the Montreal Maroons, a popular hockey team between 1924 and 1938. The man’s camera, the most intriguing piece of the hipster’s ensemble, may be a rare early Kodak 35, a portable travel camera that was available between 1938 and 1942, as noted by curious sleuths from Snopes.com.

Or maybe this photograph captures an authentic time traveller enjoying events in British Columbia. Whatever the man’s origins, Internet hype pushed this random image from Canadian obscurity into a global conspiracy theory discussion. Nice work, hipster guy.

Want to know more about images that capture the online public’s attention and their impact on brand marketing? Check out: www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2011/papers/the_mystery_of_the_1940s_time_traveller_the_ch.html