Total Film confessed via blog post today, June 6, that they were responsible for causing a Twitter and Internet sensation claiming that July 5, 2010 was the day that Back to the Future characters Doc (Christopher Lloyd), Marty (Michael J. Fox), and Jennifer (Elisabeth Shue) visit in the second film.

The magazine’s original tweet read: “Great Scott! It’s Future Day! In Back To The Future, Doc Brown sets the time circuits for 25yrs in the future…that day is today!”

This “fact” was brought up during an informal office conversation, so the magazine posted the Tweet. It blew up as Total Film’s 30,000 Twitter fans began reposting the Tweet.

Hardcore Back to the Future fans began responding to the Tweets, claiming that the “fact” was false.

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This is when Total Film went too far, in my opinion. They admit that they “photoshopped an image of the digital time display from the dashboard of the DeLorean to say ’05 07 2010’ and loaded it onto twitpic,” according to the magazine. The Tweet that accompanied the pic read: “Many of you don’t believe 5/7/10 is mentioned in Back To The Future. So here’s proof we totally didn’t Photoshop.” (My question is: Why even say that you didn’t Photoshop if then you admit that you did? All this situation needed was clarity, and the picture did nothing to clear things up.)

However, once a fan clicked on the twitpic, he or she would find the following caption: “We got it wrong. Apparently 5th July 2010 isn’t mentioned in Back To The Fauture. So we went back and changed it.” Hardy har har har. This would have been a cute little way to apologize if fans hadn’t assumed that the picture was straight out of the film. All the picture did was egg on the hoax.

My question is: Why even say that you didn’t Photoshop if then you admit that you did? All this situation needed was clarity, and the picture did nothing to clear things up.

I’m ashamed to admit that I, too, was affected by the hoax. But I’m not the only one. A variety of celebrities including Conan O’Brien, Elizabeth Banks, Joe Jonas, Ivanka Trump, Emmy Rossum, and Colin Hanks fell for the hoax, too.

Argh!

So the question is: Are you as gullible as I am? Or did you have a feeling it was a hoax?