Pete Hegseth didn't sport emo look in senior yearbook photo ⁠5%

By Jack Izzo⁠7%

7/17/2026, 3:46:12 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Biased Writer Voice, and Availability Heuristic, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 25% saturation with 85 hits. Analysis detected 370 faulty-reasoning hits from 340 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 20.7% and a BS Rank of ⁠5% (20,144 of 21,203 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 95.00% of the article peer group.

In July 2026, an image spread online supposedly showing U.S. 
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's yearbook photo from his senior year of high school in 1999. 
The image showed the purported Hegseth with a very emo look — wearing all black, with side-swept, medium-length bangs and black eyeliner. 
Snopes readers contacted us asking whether the image was real. 
It was not. 
Hegseth grew up in Minnesota and graduated from Forest Lake Area High School in 1999. 
So, we searched to see whether the school's yearbooks were archived. 
They were. 
Hegseth kept a busy schedule, according to the 1999 yearbook, playing on the football and basketball teams. 
He also sang in choir, received a nomination for homecoming king and was voted by his classmates as "Most Likely to Marry" alongside his girlfriend. 
(According to The New Yorker, they did marry in 2004 but divorced in 2008 because Hegseth admitted to multiple affairs.) 
Here's how Hegseth described his high school experience in the yearbook, listed in the order "nicknames; activities; post-high school plans; favorite high school memories": 
**Hegseth, Peter:** Archi, Pistol; Basketball '96 '99, Football '97, '98, Basketball State Tournament '99, beating Blaine; go to a college (maybe military academy), marry a beautiful wife (M.S.), roll in the dough, have Pete Jr. and teach him hoops; Prom '98, '99, 50 yard line, loungin' with L.E., J.H., R.R., D.J., my main man N.D., all my great memories with M.S., S.O.'s all the hoops games and football, TPing T.W.'s state is fine in '99, from the womb with K.R., Russian Civ. with K.R., N.H., lunch with N.D., T.W., J.H., N.H., cliff jumping with M.S., canoeing down the St. 
Croix with the gang, Perkins after games 
But there was no sign of Hegseth's supposed emo look. 
Here's what his real photos looked like: 
(Forest Lake Area High School, Snopes illustration) 
OpenAI's verify tool identified a SynthID watermark in the fake yearbook photo, suggesting it was AI generated, though Snopes could not independently confirm the photo's source. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 3.8%Jack Izzo: 3.1%Snopes: 2.4%Confirmation Bias3.8%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 1.5%Snopes: 0.8%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 10.3%Jack Izzo: 4.7%Snopes: 3.4%Availability Heuristic10.3%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.9%Snopes: 1.3%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.2%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.8%Snopes: 1.3%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 5.0%Jack Izzo: 2.1%Snopes: 2.4%Framing Effect5.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.1%Snopes: 0.2%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.3%Snopes: 0.5%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.1%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.5%Snopes: 0.5%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.5%Snopes: 0.4%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 12.4%Jack Izzo: 5.4%Snopes: 5.0%Negativity Bias12.4%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.6%Snopes: 0.7%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.5%Snopes: 0.6%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.1%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.5%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.3%Snopes: 0.4%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.4%Snopes: 0.6%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.1%Snopes: 0.0%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.9%Snopes: 1.5%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 7.1%Jack Izzo: 0.9%Snopes: 0.6%Primacy Effect7.1%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.2%Snopes: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.7%Snopes: 1.5%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.1%Snopes: 0.4%Straw Man0.0%This article: 25.0%Jack Izzo: 6.7%Snopes: 6.0%Appeal to Authority25.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 1.0%Snopes: 0.9%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.1%Snopes: 0.5%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.6%Jack Izzo: 0.1%Snopes: 0.1%Circular Reasoning0.6%This article: 2.9%Jack Izzo: 2.8%Snopes: 3.5%Hasty Generalization2.9%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.7%Snopes: 0.7%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.6%Snopes: 1.5%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 6.5%Jack Izzo: 2.7%Snopes: 3.0%Appeal to Emotion6.5%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.4%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 5.9%Jack Izzo: 2.6%Snopes: 1.6%Post Hoc (False Cause)5.9%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.9%Jack Izzo: 2.7%Snopes: 1.6%Burden of Proof0.9%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.3%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.2%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 1.8%Snopes: 1.8%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 4.4%Jack Izzo: 1.0%Snopes: 1.8%Ambiguity (Equivocation)4.4%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.3%Snopes: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.2%Snopes: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.1%Snopes: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 7.1%Jack Izzo: 6.6%Snopes: 3.3%Unattributed Quote7.1%This article: 6.5%Jack Izzo: 2.2%Snopes: 2.3%Quote-first Misdirection6.5%This article: 10.6%Jack Izzo: 2.4%Snopes: 2.5%Biased Writer Voice10.6%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.2%Snopes: 0.7%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.2%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.0%Snopes: 0.3%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Jack Izzo: 0.2%Snopes: 0.4%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

340 words analyzed.

Speakers

4speakers45%attributed speech188writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 10 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 15 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 22 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 3 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 15 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 11 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 2 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 17 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 25 words • 0.0% coverageThe New Yorker • 20 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 24 words • 100.0% coveragePete Hegseth • 99 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 7 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 10 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 7 words • 0.0% coverageSnopes • 7 words • 0.0% coverageOpenAI • 26 words • 100.0% coverage
Selected voice

OpenAI

100%flagged-word coverage
26 attributed words17% of attributed speech77% writer coverage
0%50.0%100.0%Biased Writer Voice+94.7 ptsWriter: 5.3%OpenAI: 100.0%100.0%Unattributed Quote-12.8 ptsWriter: 12.8%OpenAI: 0.0%0.0%Quote-first Misdirection-11.7 ptsWriter: 11.7%OpenAI: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.