President-elect Joe Biden's earlobes have become the subject of much speculation on social media with users pushing an unfounded conspiracy theory that he has been using a body double to make appearances at certain public events.
The rumors started swirling after social media users started noticing what they believe were differences in the former Vice President's earlobes.
Biden's Body Double Has 'Attached' Earlobes
A Twitter user claimed that the man in a video clip of the original Joe Biden had "unattached" earlobes, which essentially means his earlobes curve up between the lowest point of the earlobe and the point where the ear attaches to the side of his head. Meanwhile, the "body double" had earlobes that joined directly to his head.
"Is it not strange that in the past few years, Biden's earlobes have gone from adjacent to attached?" another user wrote alongside a side-by-side photo comparison of Biden's past and recent public appearances. "The patterns of the cartilage don't match either," a third user pointed out.
The same conspiracy theory was floated on a Reddit page titled "Is Joe Biden a clone? Check his earlobes," that included photos from 2008 and 2020 showing Biden with detached and attached earlobes, respectively.
Snopes Flagged the Claim as 'False'
According to fact-checking website Snopes, the social media posts were misleading because they only compared alleged changes in Biden's appearances by examining one side of his face. For instance, in the first post, the user used one side to make the argument that he had attached earlobes and the other side to claim he had unattached earlobes.
As far as the second post is concerned, the angle from which photographers capture portraits of people can affect how the earlobes appear in photos. The website even analyzed dozens of pictures of Biden from various sources over his political career and came to the conclusion that the discrepancies in the president-elect's earlobes were due to aging, a facial surgery to treat a medical condition or a cosmetic face-lift.
Co-incidentally, there were rumors that Biden underwent facial cosmetic surgery in several news reports, including a 2019 New York Magazine article that mentioned he had a scar behind his ear from a face-lift procedure.
