The brilliant (or incredibly stupid) idea behind CLOO is to use social networking to make it easier to find somewhere to pee in big cities. The CLOO website explains:




It's one of those concepts that raises so many problematic issues that you have to wonder whether it's real or just a joke. And people have been asking this question on twitter. To which CLOO responds that they're "quite real".

I suspect CLOO is meant to be taken seriously. There have been other strange toilet ideas that turned out to be real. Remember the Microsoft iLoo?

However, in an interview with CNET the people behind CLOO — Hillary Young and Deanna McDonald — admit that they have no funding to take their concept out of a prototype stage. Which makes its reality status a moot point. (Thanks, Bob!)

The Premise: A couple claims to be allowing the internet to vote on whether or not they'll have an abortion.

This has been getting a lot of attention on blogs over the past few days, and by now it's been definitively proven to be a hoax. Kevin Hoffman points out what I think is the most telling piece of evidence. The couple registered the domain name birthornot.com over two months before the baby was supposedly conceived. Also, the man behind the site has been identified as Pete Arnold, who is apparently a well-known right-wing troll.

So, in other words, this is just another cynical shock-style hoax designed to be offensive. (Thanks, Bob!)

Yesterday the GOP debuted its own URL shortener. Wired.com describes the results:


How could they not have foreseen this would be the result if they created a URL shortener that made it look as if the GOP was endorsing any link a user entered?

Mass: We Pray claims to be a new video game that allows you to simulate going to church, without ever leaving home. Shacknews.com reports receiving a press release from Prayer Works Interactive, the maker of this purported product. An excerpt follows:


Can this be real? As often with claims of a religious nature, Poe's law rears its head. (The real religious stuff is often so crazy that it's indistinguishable from the spoof stuff). But let's review some of the typical signs that a website is a hoax:

1. The site makes a claim that seems outrageous or absurd.
2. It advertises a product, but doesn't actually allow you to buy it.
3. It's registered anonymously, and no business address is provided.
4. Although you can't buy the main product, you can buy a related t-shirt or mug.
5. Google ads (or other unrelated ads) are posted to profit from traffic to the site.

An outrageous or absurd claim? Check. You can't buy Mass: We Pray, but the company claims that on Friday, Nov. 20 you'll be able to pre-order it. (Let's wait and see if they hold true to that promise.) The website is also registered anonymously through Domain Discreet, and Prayer Works Interactive offers no business address.

That's three signs of being a hoax. So my guess is that Mass: We Pray is probably fake. But the real test, of course, will be to wait and see if they ever offer this thing for sale.

Below is a video demonstration of the game.



Update: On November 20 Mass: We Pray was revealed to be a hoax. (No surprise there!) The pre-order link, which previously had been dead, became clickable, leading to an ad for the video game Dante's Inferno.

(Thanks, Bob!)

MSNBC has posted a list of the "10 most heinous hoaxes on the Net." Though in the intro they admit they added in "a handful of amusing ones." Here's the list (minus their descriptions):

• Twitter/Facebook AMBER alert
• Bonsai Kitten
• Epilepsy Forum Raid
• Bigfoot's body
• Changing the value of pi
• Save Toby
• MySpace suicide
• 419 Nigerian money scams
• Work-at-home scams
• Facebook hoax on TechCrunch

I don't think "Bigfoot's body" counts as a true internet hoax. Sure, people discussed it on the internet, but it was also discussed on TV, radio, and in newspapers. As for heinous internet hoaxes, a few of the ones they missed include Manbeef.com, Marry Our Daughter, and Lcpl. Boudreaux’s Sign

The Manhattan Airport Foundation is a hoax site purporting to promote the conversion of New York's Central Park into an airport.

Clues that the site is a hoax: a) it's registered anonymously; and b) the foundation lists its address as "233 Broadway, 58th Floor, New York, New York." 233 Broadway is the Woolworth Building, which only has 57 floors.

Apparently, the Huffington Post didn't realize the site was a joke, and posted a link on its front page about the plan to build an airport in Central Park. (via gawker)

A new hoax website advertises the World's First USB-powered Chainsaw:




It's said to be shipping in September. The real question is who created this page and why. It's registered anonymously (typical for a hoax site). We'll just have to wait and see who takes credit for it. (via wired)

Recently a woman who identified herself only as "April's Mom" started blogging about how her unborn child had been diagnosed as terminally ill. And yet she had decided to go through with the pregnancy anyway. Her blog quickly became popular with the anti-abortion crowd. On Sunday "Little April Rose" was born, but died soon after.

But skeptics noticed something strange about the picture of Little April that April's Mom posted on her site. Little April looked exactly like a reborn doll called Avery manufactured by Bountiful Baby.

Soon after, April's Mom was unmasked as Beccah Beushausen of Mokena, Illinois. Her entire blog had been fiction. The Chicago Tribune has more details.

MomSourcing — MomSourcing: "You know you should call your mom on Mother's Day. But in today's fast-paced world, between work, hobbies, and "me time," it can be hard to squeeze in. We can help. Outsource your Mother's Day responsibilities to MomSourcing and let us make the call for you." According to Boing Boing, it's a joke. But I wonder how long before it proves to be a case of satirical prophecy.

Wikipedia Hoax — Irish student Shane Fitzgerald conducted an experiment to test whether journalists blindly rely upon wikipedia as a source of information. Shortly after composer Maurice Jarre died, Fitzgerald placed a false quote on the wikipedia page about him, claiming Jarre had said: "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear."

Sure enough, the quotation soon appeared in newspapers throughout the world. Why is this no surprise? [Yahoo]