It was an accidental hoax. A screenshot from Back to the Future got passed around this summer, showing that June 27, 2012 was the date when the DeLorean hurtled forward in time. After a certain period of excitement, posts, and retweets, people soon realized that the image had been modified: the “actual” date wasn't for three more years. Turns out this wasn't even the first time this had happened. A similarly fudged screenshot of the DeLorean's time counters spread across the internet just two years before (though that was an intentional hoax).
Not only were people spreading incorrect information, but the collective internet consciousness didn't even recognize the return of the same error. And even when we do recognize such errors, we can't fix them as easily as we might like. Just ask Philip Roth about how difficult it was to correct an entry on his own Wikipedia page…
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