No, Chris Rock wasn't wearing a cheek pad during Will Smith slap

An image showing Chris Rock wearing what looked to be a cheek pad moments before Will Smith smacked him has been circulating on social media.

But the image is fake.

The fake cheek pad story was debunked by fact-checkers at Reuters.

Before the edited image was outed as a fake, social media users shared the image on Facebook and Twitter.

One Facebook user remarked: “If you think the slap was real. Then why is Chris Rock wearing a prosthetic pad on his cheek? Plus his hands are behind his back and he leans forward. Fake fake fake. All for ratings.”

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A tweet that received 21,900 likes, 2,200 retweets, and 660 quote tweets shared the doctored image along with the message: “In 8k quality images you can see a pad on chris rocks cheek, yeah conspiracy theorists gonna go crazy with this one [sic]”.

The Reuters team created a comparison where people can look at both the original image with the doctored image. In the image that spread across social media, Rock’s stubble appears to be missing, and his complexion is blurrier.

Gizmodo said that there are two possible explanations for why it looks as though there’s something on Rock’s face.

One: Someone edited the image. Case closed.

Two: Someone tried to make the image quality better and ran it through an “AI” photo app, and it came out wrong.

Check out another angle of the slap and see for yourself.

Getty Images

It seems the only thing on Rock’s face that night was Smith’s palm. (Also, what good would a little pad do anyway against the force of a grown man’s hand?!).

But this isn’t the only image that went viral on social media for the wrong reasons.

A collage of celebrities looking shocked was wrongly labelled as a reaction to the celebrity smackdown.

Instead, the collage shows celeb’s reactions when the wrong film was announced as the Best Picture winner in 2017.

Nicole Kidman also became a meme as people thought a snap of her looking shocked was her reaction to Smith’s slap, but it was actually taken earlier in the evening.

Don't believe everything you read online and all that.

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