Cancer Patient Dying Wish: UpwardSpiral2012 Videos are Fake

by NowPublic Staff | January 30, 2012 at 12:05 pm

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UpwardSpiral2012: Cancer Patient 'Dying Wish' Video Most Likely Fake

A series of YouTube video purports to show the journey of a young man battling stage-four lung cancer. We see him go from full health to death's door, while dispensing generic life lessons to his (for some reason unnamed) son... or do we?

This video series, posted by a YouTuber called UpwardSpiral2012, who claims to have found them on a recently-purchased used computer, is fake. If this guy really went through chemo during stage-four (i.e. "worst prognosis") lung cancer, he wouldn't look so healthy. Also, his face is as full in the last video as it is in the first.

(While it's likely that his facial hair, which is clearly unaffected, may have also fallen out to some extent during chemo, not all of the chemotherapy drugs have that effect.)

Also, as pointed out in a Reddit comment thread, nothing in the background of these videos moves. Surely, during the course of six months, this guy would have moved his coffee cup or picked up his shoe. Note that the Redditor who originally posted the video link has deleted his/her account: not a good sign for the video's veracity.

Redditor Gordopolis posted a breakdown of the video series' fishy elements. The first issue is that of the timeframe: the videos' date descriptions don't match the time that supposedly passed. The story is that Uprising2012 found the videos, as opposed to being their creator. As such, the fact that all four videos were uploaded on the same day isn't inherently suspicions. However, moving on...

Also, the supposed cancer patient's performance is... well, it's not bad. That's not the same thing as "good". Something seems rehearsed about his delivery, which is expected when addressing the camera (we shouldn't expect to be seeing his first takes), but nobody would rehearse the coughs.

Also, the props: home oxygen therapy? Again, he's far too healthy. If this guy's cancer had really spread to the extent that he needed an oxygen tube, he'd look far worse.

What's the Story Behind the Cancer Patient Videos?

So, why would someone post these fake videos? Some Redditors think it's a viral marketing ploy, while others suspect it's an actor's showreel. Of course, we can't rule out garden-variety trolling.