For my last task, I chose to do the Morristown UFO hoax, and created the image above by hand:

Then, I chose to do the Great Wall of China hoax of 1899. This hoax consisted of newspapers releasing a story that claimed Americans were bidding on tearing down the Great Wall of China and turning it into a road (link here). The prompt failed many times, resulting in probably 30-40 junk images. That is partially due to my using Midjourney for the photos, and I am admittedly new to the Midjourney method of making images. I did no refining in Photoshop since it was developed in a painting-like fashion, and I didn’t think it would be fitting for the scene. For instance, my prompt started with : 

“Create a photorealistic aerial image of the Great Wall of China, spanning through the mountains, as American settlers are taking it apart to build a road.”. This resulted in this photo:

However, this was not what I was looking for, despite being a pretty image. I eventually landed on a photo, which was derived from this prompt:

“a realistic up-close photo of the Great Wall of China being taken apart, brick by brick, by American cowboys wearing cowboy hats on horses; high-quality camera with color grading, hyper realism,”

And the photo ended up looking like this:

With several tweaks and reruns, I eventually got it to look like this:

I liked this variation a lot, and despite not being as photorealistic as I asked, it is still a stunning picture referencing a preposterous hoax that really encapsulates the state of American culture and goals, set on imperialism and invasion.