Posted on: December 7, 2023, 12:29h.
Last updated on: December 7, 2023, 01:43h.
Famed comic actor and cannabis entrepreneur Seth Rogen posted a video on Instagram recently that lit up the internet with speculation and amusement. The clip depicts Rogen, the purveyor of the Houseplant brand of cannabis and accessories, apparently sampling his own product on the Exosphere which, at 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide, is the world’s largest LED screen.
“Straight to the dome,” the caption read. “Happy Holidays.”
The Instagram Reels clip has already been viewed 8.8M times and earned comments from as high as High Times, the drug culture magazine, which quipped: “Finally a proper hot box.”
Don’t Believe Everything You Sphere
The unbelievable videos flashing across the 18K-seat concert venue — a blinking eye, a basketball, the Moon — have encouraged a slew of hoaxers to produce their own fake Sphere videos for display on social media.
Rogen, who, by the way, is a filmmaker, is apparently just the latest.
Here’s a TikTok version of the clip:
While Sphere Entertainment didn’t reply to Casino.org’s request to confirm or deny the video’s legitimacy, it’s fairly obvious to us for these reasons:
- The video neglects to mention the Sphere or Rogen’s cannabis brand, presumably so the Sphere can’t sue him for faking a free advertisement.
- Rogen’s head only occupies 30% of the display, making it viewable to only a very narrow band of observers directly in front of the Sphere.
- It is laughably low-fi, even featuring vertical grid lines.
If you require more evidence, Reddit user ZackZak30 did some impressive sleuthing.
“It’s edited,” the Redditor wrote. “The areas around the bottom of the Sphere don’t reflect the Seth Rogen clip like they did with the previous clip.” In addition, ZackZak30 pointed out, “there is a reflective surface near the bottom left of Seth Rogen’s collar that is a left over reflection from the previous clip (probably the frame where they rotoscoped the Sphere out).”
Influence of Sphere
Intentionally faking Sphere videos has become something of a thing. Not only does Tiktok have a “Vegas sphere fake or real” category, but someone invented a TikTok filter that puts users’ faces right on the Exosphere, though its results don’t appear very realistic.
A video posted to Twitter in October, appearing to show the Israeli flag, was exposed as a fake a day later by the Sphere itself, but not until after it received hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. Even news outlets fell for it, including the Breaking News Network and gossip reporter Perez Hilton.
The original poster of the Israeli video was a Twitter account named “Tallywood,” which is owned by Tal Cooperman, a visual effects artist who works as executive creative director for Station Casinos. It seems the Israeli native didn’t create the video as intentional misinformation, but as a way to show solidarity with the festivalgoers attacked, killed, and taken hostage by Hamas on October 7.
In October, we compiled this list of the best fake Sphere videos so far.
