Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates is hoping to convince us all that she doesn’t really think dinosaurs still exist. A few days after criticizing Steven Spielberg for killing a triceratops, she said it was just a joke.
Back on Tuesday, Oates retweeted IGN movie editor Chris Tilly’s tweet with the famous image of Spielberg sitting in front of the sick triceratops while filming Jurassic Park in 1993. “So barbaric that this should still be allowed... No conservation laws in effect wherever this is?” Oates wrote.
Some thought that the National Book Award winner might have actually believed that the picture showed a real reptile. However, she was just trying to have some fun with her 124,000 followers.
It was meant “as a joke,” Oates told Newsweek, adding that most of her tweets are supposed to be taken as jokes.
“Just have no idea about this. The Internet & Twitter are filled with jokes. Why is this so unusual?” she wrote in an email to the magazine.
In other words, everyone on the Internet has to stop assuming that people think that dinosaurs still exist. They might just be joking.