News

Bean goes viral

By Scott Wagar

11/04/2014

For Bottineau High School graduate, Jacob Bean, taking a selfie of himself this past May is perhaps the best thing he has ever done, because the photo has gone viral on the internet and he has become the talk of the town worldwide.

“Something happened the past two days that I never thought would have happened. I went viral,” Bean said on his website.

“Earlier this week an article was posted about people getting to close to bears at Lake Tahoe. People wanted selfies with them. Apparently it has become a thing.”

Before taking selfies at Lake Tahoe became a thing, Bean was doing it months before people started rushing to the mountain resort. Back in May, Bean, who is known as kind of a jokester and prankster was on a family backpacking trip in the Smokey National Mountains with his father, brother and best friend.

Before the trip even started, Bean was joking around with everyone that he was going to get a selfie with a black bear while on the trip.

“Sadly, we never even saw a bear. Had we seen a bear, like I have on previous trips in Montana, I would have gotten a selfie,” Bean said. “I snapped the picture that went viral while hiking on the trail with the intent of digitally adding a bear to the background.

“When I got back from my trip in Tennessee, I took the picture, quickly Google searched ‘black bear,’ found a pic I liked and added the bear to my photo. I posted it on Facebook and Instagram with #bearselfie. I got a few likes and comments. The picture was obviously fake. It was quickly and poorly photoshopped.

“Forward a few months and the picture has gone viral, showing up on various websites, blogs, videos and even in printed newspapers across the world,” Bean added.

“The only news outlet to contact me about the picture was NBC. I was open and honest about the picture being a fake. The journalist I talked to thanked me for my honesty and went about her way. I don’t know if NBC will do anything with the picture, I gave them permission in case they wanted to use it.”

Since his photo has gone viral, it has been seen on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” CNN’s “Morning Express with Robin Meade” and many more networks who actually believed the photo is real.

“To my knowledge, the photo first showed up in an article posted by Mashable. I’m guessing they found it on my Instragram account. I originally found out about it after a friend posted the article on my Facebook wall,” Bean said.

“It just goes to show you that even reputable outlets, like Weather.com and NPR, take photos off social media without checking legitimacy or getting permission.

“This is a lesson to not believe everything you see online,” Bean continued, “Even on the websites of reputable sources.”

Bean has also conducted a radio interview with a station in Philadelphia where he recounted how the story went viral in what he is now calling the “Faux Bear Selfie”.   

Bean has stated that in this moment of his life he has found to be amazing and a lot of fun.

 “While fact checking might have gone by the wayside, I’m loving all the attention from this fun photo,” Bean said. “Just remember, I was taking bear selfies (well faux bear selfies) before they were all the craze.”