Save the dinosaurs! Author Joyce Carol Oates used her Twitter account to speak out against the “barbaric” practice of large-game hunting — but she might not have looked closely at the photo over which she was so outraged.
It turns out that the grinning man posing with a huge animal behind him wasn’t a hunter with his spoils, it was actually a behind-the-scenes photo of director Steven Spielberg on the set of Jurassic Park in the ’90s.
In honor of the release of Jurassic World, a Twitter jokester uploaded the photo of Spielberg posing in front of a triceratops with the tongue-in-cheek message, “This guy thinks it’s cool to kill defenceless animals then take a selfie. Jerk.”
Oates, seemingly responding without taking a closer look at the picture, retweeted the image decrying hunting. “So barbaric that this should still be allowed… No conservation laws in effect wherever this is?”
So barbaric that this should still be allowed… No conservation laws in effect wherever this is? https://t.co/hgavm9IBaM
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) June 9, 2015
But wait — did the novelist, 77, take the tweet seriously, or was she in on the joke too? She told Newsweek that she knew what she was doing all along. “Many of my tweets are meant to be funny; but I guess that is not always a good idea,” she said.
