The bald man in the pipe hoax that fooled the internet

The fake rescue of the bald man in the pipe that fooled half the internet

It was on 12 August when the image started circulating: a bald man appeared to be trapped in a pipe, with firefighters in the middle of a rescue operation. The caption urged "do not view if you're sensitive". The scene had all the ingredients of real drama. It wasn't.

Within hours, the same online conversation uncovered the truth: the photo was a close-up of an object inside a kitchen paper roll. No bald men, no firefighters, no pipes. The hoax had worked well enough for dozens of messages to worry about the state of the "poor devil" – some even wished him a speedy recovery.

Why the hoax is still alive a year later

The curious thing is not that people fell for it, but that time hasn't buried it. A year later, the question "what peine in the end?" keeps popping up. The hoax's own creator fuelled it with a saying: "The holidays killed the bald man". The joke, like any good meme, lies in the ambiguity.

The lesson is always the same: urgent images, with sensitivity warnings and no verifiable context, are the perfect breeding ground for hoaxes. The fact that the photo was actually an everyday object was the final twist. But the mystery of whether the bald man ever got out on his own two feet remains open.

We'll leave you with the question: why is such a simple joke able to survive its own debunking? Perhaps because in August, with newsrooms half empty, the bald man in the pipe was exactly what we needed to remember that not all that glitters is gold.