A TikTok user has passed off video footage of the city of Chongqing, China as footage of Cagayan de Oro City in Northern Mindanao, with his viral video eliciting a mix of admiration, disbelief and confusion.
Uploaded on May 23, user @mateoph2.0 introduced the city in the video by using Google Earth to zoom into satellite imagery of Cagayan de Oro, with title text that reads:
It’s just a city in Mindanao, Philippines…
He then used video clips of the Chongqing skyline with labels like “DOWNTOWN,” “CITY HALL,” and “CDO RIVER” to attempt to show these were video clips of Cagayan de Oro.
The video was captioned with no indication that this was a fake video or a joke:
Cagayan de Oro City, The City of Golden Friendship #cagayandeorocity #philippines
A Google reverse image search of several clips reveals that the video is composed of timelapse footage of the Chongqing skyline and other parts of the city uploaded on YouTube by Monstercam.
A quick Google search of the Chongqing skyline confirms this. Landmarks like the Hongyadong shopping district and the Jialing river are an exact match with the landmarks seen in the viral video.
Chongqing is the largest city in China by population with over 30 million people as of 2022. Cagayan de Oro is classified as a highly urbanized city in the Philippines; its population is expected to hit just 800,000 this year.
The video was a big hit on TikTok, where it gathered over half a million views. Some comments which seemed to express genuine admiration indicate that many people fell for the video. One user commented, “Ang ganda pala ng CDO (CDO is beautiful).” Others expressed surprise, commenting “wow!” or “nice.”
Other users expressed that they knew it was a joke, while there were also attempts to alert those who might have believed the video. One such TikToker commented, “I’m at cdo rn and hindi ganyan oyyy (I’m in Cagayan de Oro now and it’s not like that).”
As of June 5, the viral Tiktok has garnered over 576,000 views, 82,000 likes, 1,901 comments and 5,796 saves. It is among the top trending videos on Tiktok in the country. (JG)