We Are the 99th Percentile

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply.  Here’s a few things you should know about why that doesn’t prove 100% you are who you say you are.

1. More than a dozen fake photos already documented in the53.  Company you keep, and all.  All the photos with older dates (like 2003) were pulled, as well as the egregious rip-offs, like the Nigerian blogger in Spain who was shopped into the Nigerian immigrant to the US telling us to suck it up.  After the53 was exposed, then the EXIF data started vanishing from new entries.  If the53 was such a popular idea, why would the creator need to fake entries?  

2. Anyone can create a fake Facebook account.  We already know from the HB Gary disaster that they were selling a fake identity management tool that allowed one person to run 50 fake personas, complete with fake social media accounts.  So a FB account doesn’t prove you’re real.  It doesn’t disprove it, but bear in mind there’s precedence, plus see #1.  We already know Erickson’s willing to fake entries to create more push for the blog.  That doesn’t mean they’re all fake, and you could genuinely agree with him, but jumping in to support 100 people who agree with you is easier than jumping in to support one.

3. Your explanation that you keep Photoshop open could be true, but a struggling middle-class student isn’t too likely to spring for PS when GIMP is FREE.  Sometime about your story isn’t completely adding up.

4. Why’d you call me a hater?  It’s a demonstrated fact that the53 was posting fake images.  Whether you’re one of them is open to discussion, but that doesn’t make me a hater of anything but lies.

5. Yes, the entries without people are less believable.  Think about why there are so many, and why the 99 percent blog doesn’t have entries like that.  Is it possible that many of those entries were written by the same person?

6. That’s terrific that you got a full ride at a top school like Wellesley.  Are you suggesting that people who didn’t are somehow not deserving of a good education?  Should they just “suck it up”?

ipskaya:

As the girl in this photo, I can assure you that it is not shopped (except to crop it and play with the lighting). Why did I crop it in Photoshop? Because I tend to keep Photoshop open a lot as I use it for image-editing in general pretty frequently. If you don’t believe me, check out my Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/allison.matus

I decided to use my image for the reason that too many of the 53%ers just post text. I wanted this to seem more real. But, people will believe what they believe. Haters gonna hate.

wearethe99thpercentile:

This IS shopped.  Literally.  Once The53 was exposed for using fake images, or shopped images with old dates in the EXIF data, they pulled them off the site.  Now they’re trying to cover their tracks better, like this shot with a 10/13 date… taken in Adobe Photoshop CS4.  Please explain why you need Photoshop to crop a photo.

Also notice how few of The53’s entries actually show people. Lots of words, which the same person could write over and over, but not many like the image above, with a handwritten sign.

Which was shopped.

I can tell by the pixels.

the53:

I come from a struggling middle-class family.

My parents have virtually no money to send me to college.

I worked my ass off in high school and graduated top of my class.

I got into Wellesley College with a full ride thanks to the generosity of the wealthy alumnae — the 1%.

So excuse me if I don’t whine about how the wealthy screw me over.

I am the American Dream.