You’ve probably seen this clip flying around Twitter over the past few days as thousands of verified accounts have shared it.
The tweet from Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist @Salesforce and columnist for @ZDNet and @HuffPost captioned it as, “Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa broke the world record for the highest wave ever surfed (82 feet), during a session in Nazare, Portugal”:
Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa broke the world record for the highest wave ever surfed (82 feet), during a session in Nazare, Portugal. pic.twitter.com/cNNBywrgVr
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 27, 2019
Yes, the video is amazing. But most everything else about the tweet which has been liked over 220,000 times is wrong including the name of the surfer and that’s not the record-breaking wave:
"The big problem with this footage, however, is that it’s not Rodrigo Koxa and it’s not the wave that broke the records." Via @Forbeshttps://t.co/mded1dvMsc https://t.co/CLLlPRnH5Z
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) January 28, 2019
From Duncan Madden at Forbes:
The big problem with this footage, however, is that it’s not Rodrigo Koxa and it’s not the wave that broke the records. Below is the footage that went viral last week, properly sourced from the World Surf League and with the correct credits. Undeniably eye watering and extraordinary, it is in fact German surfer Sebastian Steudtner, still surfing Nazare, from a completely different session on January 18, 2018.
Madden posted the video of the real record-breaking ride in his article:
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But do they even care that it isn’t accurate? “Nope”:
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) January 29, 2019
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