If there's one thing social media has shown me over the past 10 years, it's just how lazy some people are when it comes to checking sources of outlandish claims. How many times have you been on Facebook and seen that one of your friends has posted a link to a cancer miracle cure that the pharmaceutical industry does not want you to know about, maps of radiation leaks from Fukushima, or pictures of animal cruelty? I always look at these with a sceptical eye, and usually after just a few google searches, I discover their origin and look down on the people who posted them like the pompous, arrogant dick I am. I have, however, recently been surprised by a video doing the rounds. A video that has such a basic mistake in it, I am surprised anyone would share it. The video was called '9/11 And Flight 175 Alarming Footage' and not only does it claim that 9/11 was an inside job, but has evidence that the footage of Flight 175 crashing into the south tower was faked.

The video says that the footage shot by Michael Hezarkhani is fake because of two reasons. The first is that "a real airplane could not have sliced through a building" but the narrator gives no evidence as to why they can't do this, so it can be dismissed. As they say - what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

The second reason the narrator believes the footage was faked is because it shows Flight 175's left wing going behind a building that was behind the south tower. This would be impossible from the angle of the footage and the direction of Flight 175. The narrator says that this is a computer glitch and is irrefutable proof that 9/11 was an inside job, and that the video was fake.

Let’s for a second ignore the thousands of people who physically witnessed the attack, the wreckage of the planes, survivors inside the World Trade Centre who saw the plane coming towards them, air traffic control, and all the thousands of other bits of evidence that prove beyond all doubt that a plane did crash into the complex. Let’s say that this video is the only piece of evidence that we have that shows the attack. Does it contain evidence that it was faked?……NO! and it’s embarrassingly easy to find out why. In-fact I was able to get to the bottom of this mystery using nothing more than my iPhone in under 1 minute.

Looking at the footage and knowing that Flight 175 hit the south tower flying north I figured that it was shot somewhere in Battery Park. Opening apple maps and turning on 3D I immediately found the buildings in the video. The white one at the front is called the Whitehall Building, and directly behind it is the Downtown Athletic Club. This is the building that this video claims is behind the World Trade Centre complex.

But let’s say that the person who made this video did not have a shiny iPhone… is there any other way he could have found where this building was? YES! by simply googling “lower Manhatten” and looking at any image after 1930 (date the Downtown Athletic Club was constructed). All these images clearly show the 159m classic Art Deco building over 0.3 miles south of the World Trade Centre complex site.

No one – and I mean no one – has any excuse for sharing this video with their friends, and they should be mocked for their lack of critical thinking and laziness.