Summary: Snackfishing is the practice of creating fake viral food content, and the clearest example is a 2023 video showing transparent Heinz ketchup that turned out to be hair gel. The incident drew over 113 million views and reveals something deeper about how easily deception spreads online.
A little over two years ago, a bottle of completely transparent Heinz ketchup sat on a supermarket shelf. Or at least, that is what a nine-second video wanted you to believe. Today, that clip stands as the defining case study of a strange internet phenomenon called snackfishing.
What Snackfishing Actually Means
The term "snackfishing" describes the practice of creating fake viral food content. Think of it as catfishing, but instead of a fabricated personality, the bait is a fabricated food product.
The clear ketchup video hit Instagram in November 2023. An Australian man posted the clip, showing himself pulling a bottle labeled "Tomato Ketchup Clear" from a shelf. The product looked bizarre enough to work: a transparent bottle filled with something that was definitely not the red condiment millions of people squeeze onto their fries every day.
More than 113 million people watched that video on Instagram. The engagement was massive. People wanted to find this product. But the clear ketchup vanished from shelves almost instantly, and nobody could actually locate it in any real store.
There was a simple reason for that. The bottle was not filled with ketchup at all. It was hair gel.
Why Fake Food Goes Viral So Easily
The clear ketchup incident works as a perfect example because it contains every element that makes snackfishing effective. The visual is unusual. The video is short, just nine seconds, leaving no room for scrutiny. The setting looks ordinary, a regular supermarket shelf, which gives it an unearned layer of credibility.
And then the internet does what the internet does. People share it. People debate it. People search for it. The product's sudden "disappearance" from stores only fueled more speculation. Every failed search became part of the story.
Academic research on why people fall for deceptive claims offers some context here, even if it does not focus on food specifically. A 2019 study from Texas Tech University found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in whether someone believes viral and deceptive claims. The same mental shortcuts that lead someone to reject established science can also make them more likely to accept a fabricated claim that fits a compelling narrative.
Interestingly, the research suggests conspiracy mentality plays a much more mixed role in rejecting established science compared to its role in believing fabricated claims. In other words, the leap from "this seems weird" to "this must be real" might be driven by different psychological factors than the leap from "scientists say X" to "I don't believe X."
The Botnet Mistake
This tendency to see coordinated deception where none exists cuts both ways. During the November 2020 election, a long-running Twitter copypasta joke was mistaken by some users for a coordinated misinformation botnet. The joke, which began with "That's it. That seals the deal. I've been an American citizen for 54 years..." appeared under tweets from Trump, Biden, and news outlets. A podcaster flagged the posts as suspicious, but the pattern turned out to be nothing more than a meme people found funny.
People saw patterns. People assumed deception. Sound familiar?
What Snackfishing Says About Online Trust
The clear ketchup video did not cause real harm. Nobody lost money. No election was influenced. But it did demonstrate how little friction exists between a bottle of hair gel and 113 million pairs of eyes.
The gaps around snackfishing are revealing on their own. Sources do not specify how often these fakes get created, which platforms see the most of it beyond Instagram, or how platforms respond to them. That absence of data might be the most telling detail of all. We have a named phenomenon with a headline case study, and almost no structured understanding of its scale.
So the next time you see a bizarre food product going viral, pause before you share. Ask yourself: would a major brand really release this, or is it just hair gel in a clever disguise? Have you ever been fooled by a viral food video?
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