Green Party Leader Photoshopped With Fake Reusable Cup and Straw

The Canadian election campaign has been rocked by yet another international incident after it was revealed Canada’s Green Party edited a photo to show party leader Elizabeth May drinking from a metal straw and reusable cup featuring their logo.

The latest bombshell was brought to us by the National Post. It’s believed the photo was taken on the west coast earlier in the year.

At first glance, the photo looks pretty innocuous, but upon closer inspection, something is off. You can see the feathering around the cup, the sharpness is off a bit, and the lighting is absolutely fucky. While it’s a valiant effort you can tell the photo was edited by someone who was merely proficient at Photoshop, not a pro.

Now, I’m no fake photo expert but I was able to make you a handy little graphic.

As you can see, the women on the right, real; that man’s fancy little hat, real; May’s glasses, real; the drink the man in the back left is holding (maybe a Snapple?), real; that cup in May’s hand, FAKE!!!!!

Still not good enough for you? SIRI ENHANCE!!!!!!!

DO YOU SEE NOW!!!?!??!?! That bracelet? Real. That cup? Freakin’ not real!

Now that we’ve used our enhanced graphics computer machine to see what is real and what is fake, it’s time to address the important question: Why? Why this cup? Why now? The Green Party told the Post that in the original photo, May was holding a reusable cup and the photoshop was to get the Green Party logo front and centre. The photo is available online as it seems it was used as a handout by her campaign.

Now, upon viewing these photos what can we learn? Well, not much. We can’t really see what kind of cup May was using, but we do know there was no metal straw in the photo. Here’s another graphic.

Even though it’s weirdly cropped, we can see several familiar things here. The man with the fancy hat, the mystery (possibly Snapple) drink, and the finger holding the straw return, but do you know what doesn’t? THE STRAW!!

In case you’re unaware, the use of plastic straws has, for some ungodly reason, become a bit of a focal point of the environmental conversation for the most annoying people imaginable. On one side of the coin, you have people posting photos or videos of themselves drinking a soda with 47 plastics straws in it—their driving ethos being “TRIGGERED MUCH, LIBS.” On the other side some use the metal tubes to signal how much more advanced they are than you.

A Green Party spokesperson told the Post that she doesn’t think the metal straw was added to hammer home May’s environmentalist bonafides. Spokeswoman Rosie Emery said “[May] is a person … who walks her talk in every way. She really does. That’s one of the things I admire about her.”

It’s an unforced error on the part of May’s team. The conversation surrounding “fake news” in the Canadian election is reaching a fever pitch and for a candidate to be putting up false images, no matter how innocuous they seem, is just bad practice.

Not cool. Not very metal.

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