Man angry his photo was used to prove all hipsters look alike — then learns it wasn't him

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A man threatened to sue a technology magazine for using his image in a story about why all hipsters look the same, only to find out the picture was of a completely different guy.

The story in the MIT Technology Review detailed a study about the so-called hipster effect — "the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same."

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The inclusion of a version of a Getty Images photo of a bearded, flannel-wearing man, tinted with a blue and orange hue, prompted one reader to write to the magazine: "Your lack of basic journalistic ethics in both the manner in which you 'reported' this uncredited nonsense, and the slanderous, unnecessary use of my picture without permission demands a response, and I am, of course, pursuing legal action."

But it wasn't actually him.

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So in the end our creative director ... wrote to Getty Images and said,"Look, we have an angry reader who doesn't like the way we used this photo. Could you check that you know that he signed a model release and the license is all in order?"

They have a team that deals with legal complaints and they went into their archive and checked the details and they came back to us and they said, "Actually the model in this photo does not have the same name as the person who wrote to you."

They wrote to him and ... said, "We don't think this is you." And he replied, "Oh, I guess you're right, it's not."

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