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Phelps’ Shark Race Deemed ‘Fake News’ — Outrage Over Computer-Generated Great White

By Roz Zurko
Published on: 22:39 PST, Jul 23, 2017

Michael Phelps racing a great white shark was an event much anticipated for Sunday night’s kick off of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week 2017. So what happened to cause so much outrage after the race was finished?

Phelps didn’t win, as the fastest time he’s been clocked in the water is about six mph, and a great white shark can clock in close to six times that speed at 35 mph. The outrage wasn’t about Phelps’ loss, but about what he actually took on for competition. The Phelps race against the great white shark was nothing more than the Olympic swimmer swimming side-by-side with a computer-generated version of a great white shark.

Is fake news starting to seep into the entertainment sector? Many folks across the social media sites seem to think so after the popcorn was made and families gathered around their TV sets last night only to see Michael Phelps swim a race against an image of a great white shark.

The “Michael Phelps – Great White Shark Race” has been hyped for weeks leading up to the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Visions of danger danced in the heads of the Shark Week viewers as they anticipated the Olympic swimmer in the water with the great white beast swimming in unison.

A great white shark is a predator and much bigger than a human, so people didn’t expect Phelps to swim with the shark without any precautions. Many envisioned two swimming lanes fenced off so that the shark couldn’t get at Phelps, but folks didn’t expect an image of Phelps swimming super imposed over a shark swimming. With a little ingenuity, computer users could have pieced together that type of video themselves.

As the New York Post reports, Twitter users “blasted” Phelps for not racing against a real shark. People claimed they felt “robbed” after all the hype around this great white shark race. Others called Discovery’s advertising Phelps racing a shark a “scam” after it turned out to be nothing more than a “simulation.” Many people called this “false advertising” from the Discovery Channel, as seen below in one tweet out of many.

As an earlier article from the Inquisitr reports, Michael Phelps donned a special wet suit for the occasion and the advertising leading up to Shark Week’s 2017 debut showed Phelps in a special contraption that gave him shark-like fins. People were ready to see this death-defying race, but it never materialized. The post below is how many envisioned what this much-hyped shark race between Phelps and a great white might look like. Many thought that Phelps would be in the water with the shark in a very long shark cage that would span the entire length of the race.

Sure, Phelps came all prepared with all the bells and whistles for swimming with a shark leading into this race. This was seen in the many commercials leading up to this race as a way to entice the masses to the opening night of Shark Week.

With the shark race turning out to be nothing more than a computer-generated race, folks on social media sites have dubbed this “Shark Weak.” Still, there were some that called out the folks who believed that Phelps would actually get into the water with a real great white shark. Below is just one of the many mentions that were found all over the social media sites in anticipation for human vs. ocean beast in the water.

It seems folks believed he would get into the water at the same time as the shark, but he would be fenced off from the shark for safety. There are not too many who expected the race to be nothing more than a computer-generated version. That wasn’t a disclaimer offered in big letters during all the advertising for Shark Week 2017 on the Discovery Channel. Below you can read some of the tweets from disappointed viewers.

[Featured Image by Alexyz3d/Shutterstock]

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