“Lightning almost strikes girl in Sydney!!!” “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” “Worst Twerk Fail EVER – Girl Catches Fire!“

Viral videos like these are the internet’s junk food, a guilty pleasure you should probably ignore, but reach for anyway. Just this once. More often than not, you’re left exclaiming, “Well that can’t be real,” but how can you tell when you’re looking at the real deal? If you didn’t know, all three of the videos linked above are fake.

To help, we turned to filmmaker and visual effects specialist Alan Melikdjanian, better known as Captain Disillusion — a character Melikdjanian has been playing on YouTube for a decade, and who’s responsible for some of the best (and wittiest) debunkings online. Here are his top tips for…

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