Fake hearse towing on Shoreditch High Street becomes tweet meme of the day

By Seamus_McC

Thursday, February 04, 2010, 07:13

Yesterday evening London-based Twitterers were puzzled to find the trending topic of the day had become Shoreditch High Street (a fun but rarely national news worthy spot just a mile down the road from Dalston).

Around 3pm Tuesday afternoon Twitterer Matt Roskill, @mattpluskate

posted this photo of a hearse being towed away while mourners - complete with coffin - looked on aghast. His comment "how harsh is this?" echoed around the London interwebs for the next few hours as people piled on to condemn the over-zealous clampers and an accompanying YouTube video drew yet more ire.

Unfortunately for the righteously outraged, almost immediately other people pointed out the boom mike just visible to the far left of the photo (check it out again, just above the coffin) and quried the authenticity of the shot, with original poster Matt immediately coming clean.

It was @albionlondon picking it up that seems to have made it the big topic of the day in London yesterday and the best bit is that hours after the instigators had admitted that the photo was not of a real funeral but a staged event people were still writing in to express their support for the "bereaved" and their disgust at the clampers. If you had to pick someone to get people worked up about, can you imagine a better candidate that over-enthusiastic traffic enforcers?

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