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About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoax Photo Database, the Hoax Forum, the Hoaxipedia, and:
The Museum of Hoaxes is the sister site of Weird Universe.
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoax Photo Database, the Hoax Forum, the Hoaxipedia, and:
The Museum of Hoaxes is the sister site of Weird Universe.
HOLIDAY GAG GIFTSEverything from the popular Farting Santa to fake Lottery Ticket stocking stuffers.
HOAX FORUM: Most Recent Posts
HOLIDAY HENRYThe festive talking holiday gnome. Record a personalized message, and listen as Henry repeats it back in his high-pitched squeaky gnome voice!
2009 JACKASS CALENDARAlso available: the Monthly Dog Poop and Nuns Having Fun calendars.
PERV THE ELFHe'll waggle his tongue and say raunchy 'holiday-related' phrases.
Old Forum
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A virus on the site?
Status: Virus Alert!
In the past few days I've had a number of people report that there seems to be a virus on the site. I've also had it happen to me twice that I'll try to load a page of the site and instead be transferred to a spam site.Could you all let me know if you're having similar problems. The more info I have, the easier it will be to track down the source of the problem.
I suspect the virus is being loaded onto the site via the ads, and I've contacted the ad hosting company. But there's a remote possibility a virus is actually on my server.
Anyway, I'm working on the problem.
Fakers
Status: Book
There's another new book out to add to my library of hoaxes. It's Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders by Paul Maliszewski. From the product description:From James Frey and his fake memories of drug-addled dissolution to Stephen Glass and his fake dispatches from the fringes of politics to the author formerly known as JT LeRoy and his fake rural tough talk, we are beset by real-seeming fiction masquerading as truth. We are living in the era of the fake.
Fakers is a fascinating exploration of the varieties of faking, from its historical roots in satire and con artistry to its current boom. Paul Maliszewski journeys into the heart of our fake world, telling tales of the New York Sun's 1835 moon hoax, the invented poet Ern Malley (the inspiration for Peter Carey's novel My Life as a Fake), and Maliszewski's own satiric letters to the editor of the Business Journal of Central New York (written, unbeknownst to the editor, while he worked there as a reporter). Through these stories, he explains why fakers almost always find believers and often flourish.
Fakers is a fascinating exploration of the varieties of faking, from its historical roots in satire and con artistry to its current boom. Paul Maliszewski journeys into the heart of our fake world, telling tales of the New York Sun's 1835 moon hoax, the invented poet Ern Malley (the inspiration for Peter Carey's novel My Life as a Fake), and Maliszewski's own satiric letters to the editor of the Business Journal of Central New York (written, unbeknownst to the editor, while he worked there as a reporter). Through these stories, he explains why fakers almost always find believers and often flourish.
One of these days I'm going to get around to adding a bibliography of books about hoaxes to the museum. It's on my list of things to do. But right now I'm busy working on revising and updating Hippo Eats Dwarf for an English edition that should be out sometime this year (assuming I get the revisions done on time).
From the Archives: The Gold Accumulator
Status: Scam
Back in 1898 Rev. P.F. Jernegan claimed to have invented a device that could cheaply extract gold from sea water. He called it the "Gold Accumulator". He conducted a test of the machine in Narragansett Bay. The machine was lowered into the water, allowed to run overnight, and pulled up the next morning. Sure enough, there were gold flakes in the machine!The trick was that Jernegan had an accomplice who was a trained diver. This guy simply swam underwater and placed some gold in the Accumulator.
Jernegan and his accomplice eventually fled to Europe, but only after they had founded the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company, based on the success of the Gold Accumulator, and extracted millions of dollars from investors. They were never caught.
The full story is in the Hoaxipedia.
Another fake Holocaust memoir
Status: Literary hoax
The Curse of Oprah Winfrey has struck again. The Curse is that anyone who appears on her show to tell about their painful yet inspiring personal history, later is revealed to be completely full of BS. People who make multiple appearances on her show are even more likely to be struck by the curse.The latest flap is that Herman Rosenblat and his wife, who claimed to have met when he was a child in the Buchenwald concentration camp and she was a town girl who would throw food over the fence for him, made up their tale of young romance. The truth is that they first met on a blind date in New York. Rosenblat's publisher has canceled his forthcoming book, The Angel at the Fence.
I think skeptics have questioned the Rosenblat's story for a while. After all, how could a young girl possibly get close enough to the fence of Buchenwald to throw food over it? Yeah, he was in a sub-camp. But even so, it doesn't make sense.
As my wife and I were watching this story on the evening news, she asked why people like the Rosenblats don't simply publish their stories as fiction. After all, no one is denying that they're good stories and might make a great book. The answer, I guess, is that if you call a story true it has a lot more emotional power than if you call it fiction. So the Rosenblats (and other fake memoirists) are basically using a cheap trick to manipulate the emotions of readers and attract more attention to their books.
Links: BBC News, Telegraph. (Thanks to everyone who emailed me about this.)
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Dec 30, 2008 |
Permalink |
Comments (27)
Category: Literature/Language, Sex/Romance
Category: Literature/Language, Sex/Romance
Prankplace.com
TOOTING ANGELThis little angel ate too many beans the night before Christmas. When you walk past her, she lets 'em rip (because of a hidden motion sensor in her hand).
Public Urination Permitted
Status: Prank
Pranksters have placed signs in various places around Nottingham stating: "Public Urination Permitted After 7.30pm".The Nottingham City Council wants everyone to know that the signs are not telling the truth: "It is an offence to urinate in public and these signs have been put up illegally, for whatever reason."
This prank is basically the opposite of one I reported on over a year ago in which pranksters placed signs in public lavatories that read: "Think Green. Think Safe. Do you really need to go?"
Animals That Lie
Status: Biology
A NY Times article about the biology of deceit notes that among primates there's "a direct relationship between sneakiness and brain size." It offers this story:chimpanzees or orangutans in captivity sometimes tried to lure human strangers over to their enclosure by holding out a piece of straw while putting on their friendliest face.
“People think, Oh, he likes me, and they approach,” Dr. de Waal said. “And before you know it, the ape has grabbed their ankle and is closing in for the bite. It’s a very dangerous situation.”
“People think, Oh, he likes me, and they approach,” Dr. de Waal said. “And before you know it, the ape has grabbed their ankle and is closing in for the bite. It’s a very dangerous situation.”
Apparently dolphins are also capable of deceit:
After dolphin trainers at the Institute for Marine Mammals Studies in Mississippi had taught the dolphins to clean the pools of trash by rewarding the mammals with a fish for every haul they brought in, one female dolphin figured out how to hide trash under a rock at the bottom of the pool and bring it up to the trainers one small piece at a time.
My cat is definitely capable of deception. Sometimes she'll pretend to be sleeping, but when you walk by her, Whack!, she gets you with her paw.
New York Times Hoaxed
Status: spoof email
The NY Times apologized for printing an email from the Mayor of Paris in which he criticized Caroline Kennedy's bid for Clinton's senate seat. You see, it's easy to put a fake email address in the "From" field, so it's the Times's policy to always check that the person who seems to have sent them an email actually did so. But they didn't do that in this case, and now the Mayor is denying he wrote the email. The Times is "reviewing procedures" to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Which probably means some underpaid intern is getting yelled at. Link: NY Times. (Thanks, John!)
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Dec 23, 2008 |
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Comments (2)
Category: Email Hoaxes, Identity/Imposters, Journalism
Category: Email Hoaxes, Identity/Imposters, Journalism
What you need for a fake Christmas
Status: Ersatz products
An inflatable santa outside, artificial spray-on snow frosting the window, a plastic Christmas tree standing in the corner, and round out the mood by slipping a hi-def fireplace video into the DVD player.