Author Joyce Carol Oates was widely mocked this week after she fell for an old Internet joke about hunting dinosaurs.
Oates, 77, was apparently browsing Twitter on Tuesday when she came upon the following post:
The photo is frequently presented as a hunter and poached trophy animal to evoke outrage among animal-rights advocates and conservations, but is in actuality a picture of famous director Steven Spielberg and a fake Triceratops (constructed by Hollywood's finest set designers).
The dinosaurs obviously went extinct millions of years ago, yet many hasty online commenters have assumed the animal is a real one, and expressed outrage.
Oates seemed to become the latest to fall for the ruse, as she responded to the tweet with concern.
Oates was quickly mocked by several hundred commenters, who tweeted more jokes at her.
On Wednesday, Oates said in an email to Newsweek that she was kidding all along — you know, just playing along — but many were skeptical, and suspected she was just trying to save face.
"[I]t was meant as a joke.... many of my tweets are meant to be funny; but I guess that is not always a good idea," she explained.
As Newsweek noted, however, it's more likely that Oates had a knee-jerk reaction that turned out to be wrong. In the past, Oates has been a champion of animal rights, and once compared the euthanizing of a giraffe to Nazi doctors killing Jewish people during the Holocaust.
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